Car Wrapping – Why It Hasn’t Worked Before & How Wrappr Figured It Out

Startup brothers Liam and Jonte Shaw are picking up steam with Australia’s top brands, having reinvented the way wrapped cars will play into the modern marketer’s outdoor media mix.

Wrappr, the new OOH media brand, combines consumer advocacy with wrapped cars to create a measurable, mobile, dynamic outdoor medium.

Marketers have been sceptical of car wrapping in the past, and for good reason. Up until Nielson’s most recent 2019 Out of Home Advertising report, car wrapping performance has received very little attention from industry research bodies. Now, with third-party validation of the format, wrapped cars are set to become a much more frequent addition to the media mix.

The Nielson report found that wrapped cars are the most noticed transit media format:

• 326 per cent more than rail ads
• 106 per cent more than taxis ads
• 16 per cent more than bus ads

It also found wrapped cars are the second-most noticed OOH media format overall:

• 64 per cent more than street furniture ads
• 36 per cent more than posters
• 16 per cent more than digital billboards

The Wrappr model allows brands to build ownership of a local area, and/or ownership of a customer persona. Having spoken to numerous others that have pursued similar media models, Wrappr identified the three largest barriers to car wrapping success – previously, car wrapping companies would: have no way of ensuring safe driving from their drivers, have little-to-no way of tracking performance, and did not align the drivers with the brands they were promoting

To test their solution to these problems, whilst working with Foodora, Liam developed the concept for Wrappr and engaged the delivery service for what turned out to be a highly successful pilot campaign. Foodora ran a performance test between three cities – Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

In Melbourne and Sydney, Foodora spent 80 per cent of its out-of-home budget on traditional outdoor advertising – billboards, bus wraps, station domination campaigns etc. In Brisbane, Foodora spent its remaining 20 per cent of budget on Wrappr, with 20 Wrappr Advocates, and had the same investment in digital marketing as both Melbourne and Sydney.

Over six months, Brisbane sales grew by 108 per cent , while sales in Melbourne and Sydney grew only 34 per cent and 1 per cent respectively. That’s an increase of more than 74 per cent in sales between cities, with less than half of the investment.

Foodora country manager Jeroen Willems attributed the success of the campaign to the fact that Wrappr was able to provide out of home advertising at a “fraction of the cost of traditional options”, and that the format gave them “much more precision than otherwise would be possible in out of home.”

“The goal of a Wrappr campaign is for brands to build ownership over a local area, a customer persona, or both. If a brand wants to show off how loved they are by locals, or how loved they are by a particular customer segment, that’s what we do,” explained Shaw.

Wrappr also incentivises and encourages safe driving – GPS devices are installed into all Advocate cars while they’re driving for an active campaign, monitoring speeding and unsafe braking or acceleration. Wrappr cars also have a sticker on the back asking “How’s my driving?” so members of the community can alert Wrappr of any unsafe driving. Any unsafe driving has penalties attached to it.

Wrappr is also very ROI focused, “We don’t believe in hiding behind opaque methodologies,” explained Jonte Shaw.

“We want to help advertising be seen as trusted and genuine, so showing a clear ROI, which is third-party verified, is vital to this.”

To achieve this, Wrappr has partnered with market-leading retail analytics provider Blix, to provide their clients with granular, ROI-focused reporting and insights.

Wrappr also enables brands to create on-demand Activations, incentivising Advocates to drive or park their wrapped cars at key locations or events. For example, if a brand wanted to spontaneously target Australian Open or AFL Grand Final attendees, they could simply send out an On-Demand Activation to their Advocates and ask them to drive and/or park outside these events, and Wrappr will coordinate the activation and track the results.

“On-demand Activations are a fantastic way for brands to create high-impact brand moments where all of their Advocates collect together. It’s pretty hard to ignore ten or more branded cars driving past you,” explained Shaw.

Shaw said it’s early days, but he already sees many exciting prospects from this new form of outdoor media, and plenty of interest from brands.