The Homa Files

TakeAway:  Pairing a brand’s message with a food truck has been increasingly employed in recent months, with major advertisers using trucks as rolling sandwich boards while advertising agencies issue the call to independent food truck operators to participate in brand-sponsored events.

Food trucks have grown in popularity in major cities, and advertisers now see them as a vehicle for delivering their message directly to consumers.

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Excerpted from NYTimes, “Marketers Discover Trucks Can Deliver More Than Food” By Tanzina Vega, November 28, 2010

When the Heavenly Mountain Resort in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, wanted to promote its ski passes this season, it bypassed the usual advertising media like billboards, radio and print ads and instead chose a truck filled with snow cones driven by two improv actors to publicize its message.  For Heavenly, the idea to distribute snow cones from a truck was simple: “We’re going to give you a little bit of the mountain..”  

The challenge with buying traditional media is “paying for eyeballs of people who have no interest in what you’re trying to sell.”

But some brands prefer to create their own food truck instead of hiring an independent operator. To promote its new product, Heinz Dip & Squeeze Ketchup, the H.J. Heinz Company bought a used truck and added a custom kitchen. The truck was then branded with a custom wrapping that displayed the “Heinz Ketchup Road Trip” message along with the related Twitter handle and Facebook page address.  At each stop, visitors get a free serving of Ore-Ida crinkle cut fries or Ore-Ida sweet potato fries and a packet of the Dip & Squeeze Ketchup.  The company will also give away promotional T-shirts to people who have participated in one of the social media parts of the campaign.

Most food trucks, corporate or not, use social media tools like Twitter to post their location to their followers, and now Zagat, the restaurant guide, has gotten into the game. In early November, Zagat announced a food truck Web site that features a map with the location of the food trucks that it partners with. They are also conducting a survey of the best food trucks in New York.

Edit by AMW

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Full Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/business/media/29truck.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a210

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This entry was posted on December 30, 2010 at 5:59 pm and is filed under Mktg - Promotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.