Markets

Rent a Car, Become a Rolling Ad

By Matthew DeBord

Updated on: August 5, 2011 / 2:14 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

Advertising is a lot harder than it used to be, during its Mad Men heyday. Now, advertisers are constantly trying to find new ways to get their products in front of consumers whose fragmented attention spans are spread across dozen of different types of media. Of course, there's one place where people are still captives: in their cars.

Ads on the move
Rental car agencies are looking for ways to monetize this, through unconventional means -- and pass along major savings to customers. There are millions of cars on the road every day. Why shouldn't some of them be rolling ads?

This is from the Detroit Free Press:

Budget Rent a Car of Atlanta has teamed with an outfit that does promotional vinyl wraps of cars, Wrap Media Group, to offer cut-rate rental cars. The catch? You have to put up driving around with big, bright advertising on the sides.
"Our mission is to always provide the best value for our customers, and this is another example of that," said Heather Etzler, vice president of Budget Rent a Car of Atlanta. "We expect a very positive reaction from our customers given that the vehicles are wrapped in good taste."
The discounts can be significant. The Associated Press found one renter who said she got a $400 multi-day rental for $88.

That's a pretty good deal! But obviously, this isn't going to be something for everybody -- although the true narcissist skinflints of the world may be drawn to wrapped rentals like moths to flame. And offering money in exchange for driving a wrapped personal car is already a decent business. You have to wonder, though: What do the car makers think of all this?

Isn't the car itself an ad?
Automakers have two incentives to sell cars to rental car agencies:

Expand market share through "fleet sales"
Create an opportunity to showcase their vehicles for potential consumers

In the case of number two, the car itself functions as an ad, for both the driver and those who see it driving. This is why car makers spend hefty amounts of money on interior and exterior design.

Undermining the brand impression
There's not much the automakers can do if rental car agencies want to wrap rides in ads. Tastefulness is clearly important, however. Most people probably aren't interested in their rental car looking like something out of NASCAR.
But they might be interested in having some choice about what kind of ad wrap their rental gets. Vegetarians might not be down with something that promotes bacon, for example.

But for the moment, this small trend shows that advertisers are getting innovative. And they're not wracking their brains over how to leverage new technologies -- rather, they're just taking advantage of lots of cars and the great outdoors.

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons