50 Brand your vehicles

50

BRAND YOUR VEHICLES ...

Companies have always written their names on their names, ever since carriage-makers starting putting sides on to horse-drawn carts. If you make deliveries, or you travel around to meet your clients, take the opportunity to get your brand noticed.

As well as you name, you can add designs to the fabric sides of goods trailers, paint your logo on your railway trucks and personalise your pizza delivery bikes.

The idea The London estate agents, Foxtons, have a fl eet of Minis painted in green and yellow colours. You can’t miss them. Some of their noticeable designs include hippie-fl ower patterns, some that look as if the passengers are being x-rayed, and sporty ones with big white circles.

Sandwich companies have their names on their delivery bicycles. Ice cream vans play their own music. Green organisations use electric vehicles, and even the new greener London red buses have “Big Green Bus” written on the sides to show their efforts to lower carbon emmissions in the city. The London Air Ambulance is bright red and has its sponsor’s name painted on the sides of its rescue helicopter.

Innocent drinks started small, but with a talent for attracting attention. Their small vans are decorated with plastic grass to look

like fi elds with for their fruit Smoothies or black and white with horns and a tail to look like cows for their yoghurt Thickies. They certainly get themselves spotted.

In practice • If you’ve got to go to the expense of running your own vehicles, you might as well be noticed by the millions of people you pass by. • Have vehicles that are an extension of your brand values. If you run a charity that helps to alleviate poverty, it would be a mistake to drive a branded Rolls Royce. But if you run a Rolls Royce dealership it would be shocking to see you in anything else. • Keep close control of what goes on your vehicles. That includes bumper stickers and your drivers’ personalisation, as well as your colours and logo.