'Driving home a message': Adometer's innovation for a spa brand

Adding 3D elements to external vehicular branding helps The Four Fountains Spa grab more eyeballs across the city of Mumbai.

Adometer Media, the outdoor advertising agency run by partners Karan Bhardwaj and Kiran Rao, which specialises in vehicular advertising, executed an eye-catchy outdoor campaign for a spa brand in Mumbai, recently.

While Adometer usually offers advertising on privately-owned cars, The Four Fountains Spa campaign is an exception. The campaign, which is underway, has hired cars to promote the brand that is present in three locations across Mumbai.

Interestingly, while vehicular branding has seen branded exterior vinyls, window vinyl branding, interior magazine rack branding, phone changer branding and more, what Adometer has done for The Four Fountains Spa is rather unique. The cars not only have branded stickers pasted across the exterior of the cars, but specific 3D elements have been added to the car to highlight the spa's themes. For instance, in the three different creatives on the three cars, big fluffy rolled towels tied with flowers and clay pots that are used to drip oil during massages have been placed on top of the vehicles, while a candle image is pasted across the window. This has been done to make the transit ads more attractive, and drive home the message.

The cars are driving around the promoters who climb out of the car and interact with consumers, whenever the cars are parked at strategic locations like malls and other public places, distributing vouchers and promotional material for the spa.

Private car owners can register with Adometer and pick the brands that they would like to endorse on their cars. In return, they receive favourable compensation in the form of either cash, fuel vouchers, or insurance premium waivers.

The concept works for brands allowing advertising to reach into lanes and bylanes, carrying brand displays or commercial campaigns that have had limited reach so far with the traditional mediums of outdoor advertising.

According to Rao the cost of advertising on these vehicles ranges from Rs 5,000-9,000 per month, depending on the number of vehicles the client wants and the duration. "We recommend a minimum of 50 vehicles if the client wishes to cover most of Mumbai," he says.

Currently, 8,000 vehicles from across the country are registered with Adometer Media. "The number keeps on increasing as the process of vendor tie-ups with fleets in different cities is a continuous one," adds Bharadwaj.

Some of the key brands that Adometer is currently associated with include Radio City, Charagh Din Shirts, and realty brand Kanakia Spaces, among others.

For Kanakia Spaces, Adometer has not arranged tie-ups with private car owners for branding, but instead, designed the company-run buses for its employees using Kanakia Spaces' latest structure the Boomerang, in Andheri, Mumbai. The bus now carries a fully-wrapped illustration of the Boomerang, while picking up and dropping off their employees.

Though Adometer is a startup and has been around for less than a year, it has big plans for the year ahead, thanks to the line-up in its inventory. This includes advertising for a big playgroup franchise, creating a design theme for a realty consultant on a pan-India level, as well as organising a financial awareness campaign for a renowned mutual fund firm.

A similar initiative was launched by a Delhi-based company called CASHurDRIVE, in 2008. The company had received financial structuring worth Rs 1 crore from the investment firm VC Hunt Global.