Ads on Wheels : 2 Rival Companies Roll Out Mobile Billboards Despite Threat of Regulation
Even though it featured big-screen star George C. Scott, Fox Broadcasting’s TV show “Mr. President” wasn’t drawing hordes of viewers a couple of years ago. Looking for a tonic to cure its sickly ratings, the show’s publicists hired Dennis and Steve Williams to create truck-mounted billboards to promote the show. And so it was that three trucks, each decorated with bunting and a billboard advertising “Mr. President” and designed to look like a rolling campaign platform, roamed Los Angeles streets during the spring TV sweeps weeks in 1987.
The ploy didn’t save “Mr. President.” But it gave the Williams brothers the idea of launching a rolling billboards service as a sideline to their outdoor advertising business, Williams Graphics in Sylmar. Their billboards-on-wheels division, called Mobile Media, now has six customized trucks that each carry a pair of 10-by-22 foot billboards. The trucks tour routes for 40 or 50 hours a week to get advertisers’ messages out to specific neighborhoods.
A Dozen Customers
The Williams’ outdoor sign company makes billboards and banners (the company supplied banners for the 1984 Summer Olympics) and did $1.2 million in sales last year. And while the billboards-on-wheels division accounts for just a fraction of their business, the Williamses have lined up a dozen customers who will pay from a$3,950 to $4,550 a week for the service.
Dennis Williams, 42, pointed to a chart in his office that showed his trucks almost entirely booked through most of the summer. “We’ve been just astounded, really, at the response,” he said.
His customers include Griffin Homes and Development, which hired Mobile Media to drive through Canoga Park and Hidden Hills past competing developers’ sales offices. The Williams brothers also had a billboard-on-wheels promotion for a July 4th weekend fair and music festival in Whittier. In the fall they plan to start a six-month campaign in Southern California for am/pm mini markets, and they will launch an out-of-state campaign for Camp Beverly Hills’ new cologne, with trucks touring downtown loops of Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Jacksonville, Fla.
The Williamses aren’t the only ones in Southern California betting that the idea will catch on. Buckeye Epstein’s Huntington Beach-based company, Mobile Billboards, has been sending similar trucks around Los Angeles--and around the country to events such as the Superbowl and Indianapolis 500--since 1987, carrying messages from the likes of Valvoline and Citicorp. Epstein’s company also has carried rolling billboards for Knott’s Berry Farm and Westec Security.
The companies face trouble on two fronts. There is a growing sentiment against stationary billboards, and a Los Angeles ordinance makes it illegal for vehicles used purely for advertising to park for long in one place.
Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude wants to get the mobile billboards off the streets for good. Braude, a longtime critic of outdoor advertising, recently introduced a motion calling for a ban on “mobile or traveling billboards on the streets of Los Angeles.” Braude, whose motion has not been acted on by the council, said a billboard on wheels “desecrates the public areas.”
Besides his aesthetic objection, Braude said he worries that the rolling billboards distract drivers. And he expressed concern about rival fleets of trucks taking to Los Angeles’ already congested streets, especially since the trucks don’t move people and goods.
Bans Proposed
Braude’s campaign is the latest development in a battle over the 18,000 billboards that vie for drivers’ attention in Orange and Los Angeles counties. In 1986, the city of Los Angeles passed its first major ordinance limiting the construction of billboards, despite objections by outdoor advertising executives and some businesses that said they depend on high-visibility street advertising. Other southwestern cities such as San Diego have tried to ban billboard construction.
But Dennis Williams figures advertisers have “a crying need for a different type of outdoor advertising.” And while ads on buses are popular, they follow fixed routes. Williams offers a customized advertising route.
His company and Epstein’s have developed something of a rivalry. Each maintains that his company offers the better deal to people interested in moving advertisements. “He doesn’t know anything about the business,” said Epstein of Williams, adding: “I’m making the industry here, not Dennis.”
Like admirals of warring navies, each plays down the size of the other’s fleet of trucks. Epstein said that Williams has only three trucks. Williams said his six soon will grow to 10, and countered that Epstein’s company owned only two trucks, renting more when they were needed. Epstein said he owned many more but wouldn’t specify a number.
Services Differ
There are differences in the services they offer. Epstein recently quoted a price of $3,375 for a 50-hour week of advertising, compared to Williams’ price of $3,950 on up for the same period. Epstein, moreover, offers clients a computer monitoring system that he said verifies that his drivers have followed the routes they’re contracted for. And while Epstein’s company doesn’t make billboards (his clients must have them produced elsewhere), Williams’ company is only too happy to produce reusable vinyl billboards at a cost of $1,100 to $2,800 each.
Meanwhile, both men say they’re unfazed by a third competitor in the area who offers yet another type of mobile billboard service. Advan, a San Francisco-based subsidiary of Leucadia Inc., said it has contracts with local delivery-truck owners that allow the company to muster a 275-truck fleet in Los Angeles displaying smaller, 7 1/2-by-16-foot signs. Those trucks don’t follow tailored routes, but are guaranteed to stick to their normal delivery routes.
Both Williams and Epstein contend their trucks are no more distracting to motorists than stationary billboards and have a negligible impact on Los Angeles traffic. Furthermore, both men says they shouldn’t be singled out for tough legal treatment in the visual cacophony of taxis, city buses, pizza deliverers and express mail vans that carry advertising messages.
Epstein’s attorney, Judith Starr, argues that an outright ban on mobile billboards would be an infringement on First Amendment rights. “There’s no question that advertising is a form of protected speech, and an outright ban of one medium . . . is not within the government’s power,” Starr said.
Besides, both Epstein and Williams argue, moving billboards should prove less offensive than stationary ones. Said Epstein: “The greatest thing is that it’s here today, gone tomorrow.”
