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More advertising agencies and Fortune 500 corporations are moving towards city skylines to brand their products and kick off mega marketing campaigns in a more dramatic fashion. As billboards become more the norm, many firms are turning to building wraps and wallscapes to get their messages across to the public. According to I.T. Strategies, the outdoor building wrap market is forecast to grow at a 15 percent clip between 2006 and 2010.
Some building wraps can go beyond ten stories high depending on the size of the building. Custom sizes and shapes are another option that can also be utilized for added dramatic impact. The creative teams at these agencies realize the sky's the limit when it comes to getting their brand message to the people driving by or walking on the streets below.
"Building wraps are fast becoming the next generation of billboards as advertising vehicles for our clients," said Tom Wilhem, president at GP Color Imaging Group. For almost 40 years, GP Color Imaging Group has been producing high-quality printed graphics, particularly wide- and grand-format applications. The North Hollywood, CA-based printing firm offers a complete "start to finish" service, from pre-press and remote proofing, through printing, finishing, and shipping.
Wilhelm purchased the former digital photo lab business in 2001 and converted it into the wide- and grand-format shop it is today. They are Avery certified and use Avery graphics on many of the jobs they produce. "We use Avery opaque vinyl and window perf on adhesive our building graphics. We also use a boatload of vinyl mesh and flex face vinyl as well," Wilhelm said.
The firm depends on three HP Scitex XL1500 printing systems to produce a major portion of their work.
According to Wilhelm, the market is growing. "I'm noticing that cities across the country are opening up more buildings to building wraps. This is true especially in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and even San Francisco, who normally has very strict codes with building wrap requirements."
Wilhem said that image based graphics are huge. "We are producing more building wraps with photographic images on them.
The firm recently utilized their HP Scitex XL's plus their NUR Tempo 2 for a building wrap project they produced for Wachovia Bank. "This job required us to make a building look like a castle. We printed the all the vinyl on the XL1500s. We produced and then converted the building into a castle. We printed eight foot high medieval knights on our NUR Tempo 2 and routed them out and put 18 of them up on the building. We stood them up in the parapets to make it look like they were standing guard in the castle.
"We also printed another building for Wachovia were we wrapped almost an entire office building in Los Angeles. We used Avery opaque vinyl on that job and Avery window perf on all the windows," he said.
Wilhem reported that the average time for a building graphic to stay up is about 30 to 45 days. He said the Wachovia castle graphic will be up for 90 days and then they will be producing something different for them in that space when the contract has expired.
"The building wrap business is mostly a niche market. "There probably are only a handful of shops across that can handle this type of work because it very specialized and very tricky to produce. You also need to have a good installation team to get the project installed correctly. In some cases you need two to three weeks just to get the file printed correctly. Then you need time to get it properly folded, transported and then installed."
He added that overall that the market should continue to grow. "Look for more cities across the country to open up their properties to building wraps and wallscapes."
Spectacular Wraps from SkyTag
Las Vegas welcomes more than 50 million visitors a year. The size and scope of Las Vegas attractions and conventions demand spectacular images on a grand scale. For over a decade, SkyTag has pioneered these supergraphic images in the Las Vegas market.
"Back in 1996 we did our first major wrap when we put a 'giant hole' graphic on the LUXOR to promote Disney's movie Armageddon," said Matthew Cooper, creative director at SkyTag.
Mike McNeilly, the innovator of Tall Wall advertising and SkyTag's President "has had this vision for years," said Brett Caruso, SkyTag's production coordinator.
SkyTag has produced and installed wraps for the LUXOR, MGM Grand, Flamingo, Ballys, Palms, Mirage, the Las Vegas Hilton, and Rio Hotel and Casino. SkyTag's supersize images tower over the Strip's largest marquees, and these spectacular images can be seen from all points in Las Vegas.
"This type of signage is fast becoming a headliner in Strip advertising. All of the building murals measure tens of thousands of square feet and cover the majority of a hotel. In some instances, they're visible from miles away," said Cooper.
While the market is growing, Cooper said the hotels still want a specific marketing plan to match the signage. "The hotel groups and SkyTag don't want their locations to be used just as a billboard; they want synergy to be created between the brand being advertised and the hotel. So the exterior of the building is not just the only element in the media buy. There are many different elements that comprise the buy and the supersize image on the buildings exterior is the component that ties them all together."
This past fall, the company wrapped up a trio of jobs on a grand scale. They covered Planet Hollywood Las Vegas and Casino for Sony Pictures zombie flick Next was Rio's giant new exterior ad for Jim Beam where the hotel was sponsoring the World Series of Poker and kicking off National Bourbon Month. The third job was the most spectacular—a full wrap of LUXOR Hotel for Absolut Vodka during the grand opening of LAX Nightclub.
The Absolut installation at LUXOR was part of their 'In an Absolut World' multimedia marketing campaign. This wrap was the centerpiece for their brand the Las Vegas market. Absolut was the first long term national advertiser to do something in Las Vegas on that grand a scale. The LUXOR wrap is visible to airline traffic. Once that ad went up, it generated a tremendous amount of interest from other national advertisers looking to get their message across and build brand awareness."
Cooper and partner Brett Caruso pitched the idea to Absolut. "We told Absolut and their agency that Las Vegas is quickly becoming the new Sunset Strip. Their creative team designed a creative execution specifically for the Luxor. They in turn gave us the creative that we needed for this iconic brand spectacular. Everyone was blown away by it."
As for the future, Cooper sees huge growth potential for Sin City. "The creative concepts continue to get bigger. It will come down to the creative execution and the size of the venue it goes on. SkyTag is the innovator of these supersize images in Las Vegas and is changing the landscape of Sin City, leading the forefront in revolutionizing this marketplace and turning this region into a top ten market," he concluded.
Since 1969, Duluth, GA-based Formetco Print and Display has been raising the bar in outdoor advertising by anticipating and providing innovative solutions. It is that cutting edge thinking and 'can do' attitude that has been keeping their clients satisfied for decades.
"We are a full service sign shop. Our company is one of the largest suppliers to the billboard industry in United States," said Formetco's John Gibb.
Earlier this year, Formetco had the opportunity to meet big challenge when Dick Clark's American Bandstand purchased a 38 acre property in Pigeon Forge, TN to be transformed into a full-scale music complex. With just over a week until its scheduled grand opening, Formetco was contacted by Lamar Advertising of Knoxville, TN, to visually rebrand the former Boyd's Bear Country retail outlet, the main building on the property, as a theater and dancehall.
Gibb commented, "This project was clearly going to require some resourceful thinking. Not only were we being asked to produce a panel installation system for what was, effectively, uneven barn siding, but volatile local weather conditions such as high winds posed additional challenges, not to mention turn-around time was minimal from a printing solutions standpoint."
With digital photos and specs of the barn, Formetco went to work devising and fabricating custom "hat tracks", built to address the structure's inconsistent surface and support the necessary vinyl tensioning brackets to guard against high winds. The graphics were then output on their HP Scitex XLjet using Cooley Coolflex 13 ounce media.
"We like the lay flatness of the Cooley material and the fact that were doing a big job we wanted something that didn't have a lot of stretch to it. Cooley is one of our major suppliers and they do a good job of controlling the stretch in a material. We wrapped two sides of the building. One was over the entrance was that 14 x 48 foot the other was on the side of the barn was a 47 x 67 foot graphic that could be seen from the highway," said Gibb.
Many stadiums, arenas and retail spaces have hundreds of square feet of potential display space that in the past were mostly unusable because it consisted of rough textured surfaces such as concrete block, brick, tile, poured concrete or stucco. 3M's new 3M Scotchcal Graphic Film for Textured Surfaces IJ8624 with 3M Scotchcal Luster Overlaminate 8524 is helping change all that by offering new install options.
One disciple of the new IJ 8624 is Gary Lucke, owner of FASTSIGNS in St. Petersburg, FL. Lucke used Scotchcal Graphic Film for Textured Surfaces IJ8624 when they recently wrapped the Tennessee Titans Team Store in Nashville, TN.
"We were contacted to produce at large mural and install it on the outside wall of the stadium. LP Field is all concrete, so we needed to find something unique to use on the project. We had heard that 3M had come out with IJ8624 film for textured surfaces and we wanted to try it. The agency M3 Creative gave us the Titans project about two weeks before it was due so we could map it out. We didn't get the final high res file until a few days before the job was due. I was able to rasterize the file and we produced a 42 foot high by 45 foot wide mural of Titans QB Vince Young on our Seiko ColorPainter 64 with an Onyx Postershop RIP," Lucke said.
"Having a very tight deadline we wanted to make sure everything came off without a hitch. Once we printed the mural in sections, folded it and we hopped on a plane to Nashville. We carried on it on the airplane in seven boxes so we were sure it would arrive on time."
He said they used two different kinds of lifts and assembled the mural in 52-inch wide panels. "It was the first time we used IJ8624 and we were very happy with the results. Using it you have a wide-variety of image options from block color to full photographic reproduction."
author: BY BILL SCHIFFNER