Big trucks can be seen going around the city promoting Mercury Insurance. Putting advertisements on the truck already on the road for other companies are successfully creating a space within burgeoning out-of-home (OOH) advertising industry.
Ideas need time to spread. They need proponents and adopters. Marketers play an integral role in the spreading of ideas. A business is an idea. So is a piece of content, designed to promote that business. Every startup is a thesis, backed up with a product or service, ancillary efforts, and various strategies. The market will either accept it, reject it, or shrug.
Los Angeles-based Boxi is an innovative, tech-infused truck advertising company. It puts advertisements on delivery box trucks for drivers that are independent contractors for delivery services like Amazon. Paying customers can have their advertising campaigns on the road in as little as 15 days, according to the company.
How do you bring ideas to life? When I have an idea, the first thing I typically do is research. Learning from other things that are already out there and picking up from where someone else left off is critical in the development process. From there, I call my network to see if they have any thoughts about the idea or concept. These are people I trust and respect, so I know the feedback I get from them is worth considering. After speaking with my closest peers, I look to get in touch with an expert in the space that my idea/concept falls into and meet with them to discuss further. Once I feel confident in my hypothesis, my assumptions, and my plan, I spend the money and the time to build it! Whatever it may be. At any given time, I have between 5-10 open development projects in motion. Of those, 50% fail, but the other 50% we typically benefit from, which I enjoy seeing very much.
Billboards restricted in a neighborhood where you’d like your company to be seen? No problem, just roll a giant poster through that patch of your city by putting it on the side of a box truck. You could pay as little as $1500 a month for a multi-month campaign.
Though MedMen is a cannabis company through and through, it too is getting even more creative. Beyond its recent retail store expansion with its own branded products, it’s working with tech-infused truck advertising company Boxi to promote the brand on large-scale independent vehicles in California. Over the last 12 months, MedMen has had 50 localized trucks on California roads, and that is expected to continue for the rest of the year, said Boxi founder and CEO Neal Pecchenino. Based on Boxi’s analytics, each of those trucks reach an average of 30,000 to 60,000 prospective consumers a day. Pecchenino said he is continually being approached by cannabis and CBD companies.
Advertising on trucks is more effective than using digital media. Such has been the experience of Neal Pecchenino, who started a mobile marketing and advertising firm in October 2017. Using his own money, Pecchenino started Boxi after working for a consumer electronics company where he was spending the company’s full advertising budget on digital media, mostly Facebook and Google.
