By Dan Antonelli
Posted on Friday, August 9th, 2024
When designing art for large signs and truck wraps, it’s easy to get complacent in our creativity and simply go with a standard formula of logo plus a few bullets plus phone/web. While there’s nothing wrong with that formula, sometimes other messaging used in the layout is more effective in communicating a message about that company and their products or services.
Consider the medium for the message
Box trucks and billboards afford the opportunity to think a little differently. If you think of the canvas as an advertisement, you can go beyond the typical formula that most sign people employ. While I still believe that for most small businesses, billboards and vehicle wraps should primarily be used for brand building. Due to the size of the canvas you may have an opportunity to support the branding with a supporting message or brand proposition.
Working with your client
Many clients really don’t think beyond wanting their logo and a few bullet points with it. Or perhaps way more than a few bullet points! Typically, we’ll try to approach it from a different perspective, and query them about some of the marketing challenges they may have.
Are they struggling with a consistent perception problem? Do many of their target audience not know their brand? Do people think they only do one service and not others? Some of these questions may result in clues from the client as to problem areas in their marketing.
Assuming they have no branding problems that are part of their core issue, you have the opportunity to use this canvas to try and address some of their concerns.
Create one primary message
So now it’s time to put on your copywriting hat and think about ad copy. I’m fortunate to have a copywriter on staff who helps me “wordsmith” the message. But even if you don’t, think about the ad space as a billboard. Try to keep the messaging very short and to the point and, of course, be creative.
Is there a part of the brand architecture you can leverage in your messaging? Are they special in any way? Is there a clever headline you can add to reinforce part of their unique selling proposition? Can you evoke a feeling or something that makes the message more memorable?
Designing to stand out
The prevalence of bad wrap and signage design works to your advantage. When you create something easy to read, unique and simple, it can’t help but stand out. Try to keep this concept in mind when pitching your clients about this approach. Brand integration, with colors and logo, should always play a major role in the design. And unless the client has really good brand recognition, I’d still opt to treat the logo as a primary element and stay away from using photography of any kind.
Does a weak brand equal a weak wrap?
Inevitably, you’ll have clients with poor logos and brands that want to wrap their truck. Does this mean it’s doomed to fail? Well, failure is a difficult thing to quantify. You can safely assume that a poor brand will ultimately not be as effective in achieving the best ROI as a good brand would. Do you walk away if they remain unswayed and insist on using their weak logo? The shop down the road will have no problems wrapping that business’s truck, regardless of the logo’s effectiveness.
This certainly presents a quandary. But the more work you put out like this on the street, the more it reflects poorly on your own shop. We continue to see more and more backlash against poor wrap design. If your shop’s portfolio displays that type of work, people will assume that’s all your shop is capable of.
There is definitely a fine line here. We turn away every single job not worthy of an effective wrap design. Of the last 30 wrap designs we’ve done, only three used brands we didn’t first create or redesign. And those three brands worked fine for the medium, so I had no problem doing the job.
But if the brand is weak, it’s too much money for a business to waste, and honestly, I simply don’t want to be responsible for them getting a poor ROI. It’s our agency’s reputation at stake, too. Quite often they’re surprised at my response and generally appreciate the honesty. Usually, we’re the first to tell them their brand won’t work in the medium.
Your shop image, and the perception of your shop, is based largely in part by the work you do or become known for. If you can educate your clients about how a new image will generate a better ROI, most will be open to at least listening to that pitch. Your ability to sell it will be much easier if your work supports that concept.
This appeared in the July/August 2012 issue of SignCraft.
This is a billboard we created for a heating and air conditioning company in Palm Springs, California. Instead of cluttering the billboard with bullets, we opted to reinforce the nostalgic nature of the brand. I wrote the headline and developed the creative. We had previously developed their brand.
For this layout, the client’s main objective was to reinforce how easy it was to store your belongings using the Box Butler. They already had solid branding to work with. I thought that adding the simple message with the mascot told the whole story: “We pick up, store & return your stuff”. Perfect—now I know exactly what they do. This truck is primarily stuck in New York City traffic at all times, so you have slightly more time for the viewer to read the messaging.
We helped to develop the tagline and branding scheme for this power washing company in New Jersey. Instead of the usual bullet list, we opted to present the brand and tagline as primary focal points.
Dan Antonelli owns KickCharge Creative (formerly Graphic D-Signs, Inc.) in Washington, New Jersey. His latest book, Building a Big Small Business Brand, joins his Logo Design for Small Business I and II. He can be reached at dan@kickcharge. com. Dan also offers consulting and business coaching services to sign companies. For more information, visit danantonelli.com. On Instagram: @danantonelli_kickcharge.
