This company turns vehicles into moving billboards

In the world of advertising, impressions are everything.

Whether you're promoting your product or business on television, in a newspaper, or on a billboard, the goal is to be seen by as many people as possible.

And while a funny commercial or a flashy jumbo-screen ad may make an impression on you momentarily, many businesses are finding that they don't necessarily have the effect that other forms of advertising - say, a company car spotted all over town on a weekly basis - may have on us.

"As a kid, anytime I was riding in a car and saw a vehicle that had something on it, I was looking at it," says Jason Kluck, senior project manager at Graphik Concepts, a full-service graphics facility. "People are just automatically drawn to a vehicle that's marked - whether it's just putting a set of stripes on a muscle car or a full wrap on a van."

Graphik Concepts is a Detroit-based company that helps small businesses achieve brand recognition by turning their company vehicles - in most cases Ford Transits - into moving billboards.

BI Studios spoke with Kluck about his role at Graphik Concepts, the advantages of getting a company vehicle wrapped, and the advice he has for small-business owners considering wrapping their own vehicle.

Tell us about Graphik Concepts and your role in the company.

I've been a senior graphic designer for Graphik Concepts for a little over three years. Graphik Concepts is a full-service graphics facility that's been around for 43 years. In the past three years that I've been here, our sales have doubled. We do a lot of things other graphics companies can't do, from hand-taping to the custom engineering of parts. It's kind of a lost art form that we carry on here.

What does an initial meeting with a prospective client look like?

When a client calls us and is inquiring us about a wrap, there are always preliminary questions I ask. Do you have a logo? Do you have a branding image? What kind of car do you have? How old is it? Do you have a website? What do you want to achieve by wrapping your vehicle? I really try to pick a client's brain so that I can give them exactly what they need.

What is the design process like?

After I get all my answers, we ask the client to provide us with a logo, any branding elements, or high-resolution photos they have. We make sure the images are good enough quality for large printing. From there we begin the design process.

Normally for a full wrap, we provide two or three options. Then we'll take pieces from certain options or fine-tune a single option they like until we come up with the final design. At that point, I tell production what to make, what material to use, whether it's a full wrap or a die-cut graphic, and then it goes into production.

What's the difference between a die-cut graphic and a full wrap?

A full wrap is when every inch of exposed painted body - closed doors, closed hood, and closed trunk - is covered with graphic film. A die-cut graphic is when you just have vinyl lettering that you place on a door or the side of a vehicle with most of the vehicle's body color still exposed.

Watch the interview with Graphik Concepts below. 

Why should a small business consider wrapping its company van?

A mobile billboard gets the attention of many more eyes than a lot of other forms of advertising. It's also a very cost-effective way to get your name and brand out there. In the case of Thornton & Grooms, everybody recognizes its vehicles. And I think that's played a big part in successfully growing their business. Knowing that a lot of these small businesses are counting on us to give them a good-looking vehicle for the road - that's a big responsibility.

Why do you think so many small businesses are choosing Ford Transits as a company vehicle?

They're very versatile, they get good gas mileage, they're easy to load, and they serve as a huge billboard for our clients to market themselves.

What are the biggest obstacles and challenges you face with clients?

One of the biggest challenges is deciding on what they want to put on their vehicle. If you have a large fleet, once you start marking vehicles, you obviously want to continue to mark them in the same fashion.

Another challenge is that a lot of our clients are busy working or on the road and need their vehicle marked fast, so it can be difficult coordinating a time to wrap the vehicle.

There's a process to print quality graphics and a certain amount of time that goes into it. In some cases, we can rush some parts, but generally speaking, we like to have a few days to produce the graphics properly to make the installers are getting a good print to wrap with. If you want them to last, and you want them to be good, then you have to try to stay within that process.

What do you feel Graphik Concepts offers over other wrapping companies?

We like to give you our professional opinion. We're not just going to tell a client what they want to hear. Of course, we're going to give the client what they want, but we're also going to be honest with them. Even though wrapping is very similar to other forms of branding, because it's a vehicle, they sometimes need us to hold their hand through the process and make sure they feel they're making the right decision.

Click here to learn more about the Ford Transit. 

This post is sponsored by Ford Transit.

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