We often think of immersive experiential marketing events in the context of trade shows, custom installations, and pop-up shops — events that happen in more or less bricks-and-mortar spaces, with all the attendant advantages and limitations. But there’s another option that can offer greater flexibility without compromising on experiential impact: mobile marketing trucks. Here’s a look at what mobile marketing trucks are and some examples of the styles and formats available within this very broad category.
What Are Mobile Marketing Trucks?
Mobile marketing trucks are large vehicles designed, decorated, fabricated or otherwise tricked out to offer a mobile experiential touchpoint to consumers. These vehicles can be as complex and feature-rich as desired, and they’re suited to many purposes: food service, demonstrations, performances, retail spaces, salons, and more. Virtual and augmented reality installations provide more opportunities for interaction. Video screens, interactive displays, sound systems, specialized lighting, and other additions help create a mood in and around the vehicles, wherever they go.
Food Trucks
Versatility makes food trucks one of the most popular choices for mobile activations, pop-ups, and immersive brand experiences. They’re endlessly adaptable to any industry, from food and beverage to beauty and self-care. And while roomy enough to support the brand’s street team and activities, they’re also compact enough to fit into areas that are off-limits to larger vehicles like buses and trailers.
Food trucks have another great benefit to brands: their blocky proportions make them excellent mobile billboards. They’re easy to customize with custom-designed vinyl “wraps” applied like decals to every exposed surface. Their fun shape and colorful designs make them stand out, drawing a crowd everywhere they go. “They act as giant rolling street-level billboards and activation vehicles."
They can also support a broad footprint for sampling, games, demonstrations, giveaways, and more — all opportunities for the brand’s ambassadors or street team to interact with customers.
Buses, RVs, and Trailers
Large vehicles like RVs, buses, camper trailers, and semi-trailers are a great fit for an activation or pop-up concept — they’ve got room to create an immersive mini-world that’s all about the brand. One example: For an activation that cruised through 16 states, grooming brand Axe transformed a 39-foot bus into an Axe-themed salon and lounge. The ChillMobile, as it was known, visited high schools for product demonstrations and sampling. These large vehicles can also support a jumbo-sized footprint for additional experiential elements and activities, such as custom oversized props, interactive games and more.
Glass Box Trucks
Glass box trucks are fun, eye-catching, memorable, and made for social media. Their open glass sides create high brand visibility, and when supported by a street team, brand ambassadors or influencers, and interactive games or contests, a glass box truck can extend its footprint to create an on-the-spot activation event. Two examples: Mayonnaise brand Hellmann’s used a glass box truck carrying a giant mayo jar for a cross-country campaign against food waste. Beauty brand Amika converted a glass box truck into a “FrizzMobile,” a colorful branded pop-up shop that offered an immersive sampling experience for the brand’s anti-frizz serum.
Mobile Shop Stages
A hybrid between a food truck, a pop-up shop, and a festival performance space, the capsule-shaped mobile shop stage opens out into a performance area suitable for a wide range of activities. The mobile shop stage is “ideal for retail activations, product demonstrations, live performances, and interactive brand experiences.” Like food trucks, buses, and trailers, mobile shop stages can be vinyl-wrapped with custom branded designs. The end caps of the cylindrical vehicle can be used for video monitors, transaction counters, or other purposes, and these vehicles can be used outdoors or inside event spaces and shopping malls.
Fully Custom Vehicles
Imagine a cement truck designed to look like a cocktail shaker, a trailer fashioned into a tube of toothpaste, or a mobile “voting booth” for M&M flavors. Colorful, complex, fully custom designs like these are possible through the work of fabricators, who work with customers and agencies to turn conceptual sketches into completed, fully functional designs ready to take on the road to festivals, store openings, campuses, sporting events, and more.
Why Use Mobile Marketing Trucks?
Compared with fixed-location, bricks-and-mortar activations, experiential marketing vehicles like mobile marketing trucks offer immense flexibility. These vehicles take immersion on the road, creating brand experiences that delight and captivate consumers wherever they go.
Because they’re mobile, experiential marketing trucks can follow the audience to shopping centers, beaches, conference centers, festivals, and college campuses. Rather than luring consumers out to event locations, marketing vehicles deliver memorable experiences to the audience wherever they are, and this flexibility means they can reach many more consumers for about the same cost.
Mobile marketing trucks can measure their own exposure and engagement, helping brands monitor both location success and campaign ROI. “Advanced analytics and data collection tools provide concrete metrics on campaign performance and consumer engagement,” notes vendingtrucks.com. GPS tracking data allows the brand to evaluate locations in real time (and relocate as needed to maximize exposure). A unique QR code or hashtag can not only help promote the experience but also measure on-site engagement.
Regardless of body style or format, mobile marketing trucks can offer an appealing addition to your brand’s marketing mix. They’re a way to share experiential encounters with a wider range of potential customers than ever before, and they’re expanding the frontiers of possibility in immersive marketing.
