WTF? Tanker Truck Ad Wraps

So, I'm driving to work today, when suddenly I see a gas tanker truck with an wrap ad like you would see on a bus, advertising Scorsese's new Rolling Stones documentary. What the fuck is up with that? It's bad enough I'm paying $3.55 a gallon for gas, but the gas company or the trucking company or whoever it is, is raking in money with ads?

Has anyone else seen these? It's bad enough if they're on buses, trucks, or hybrid cars, but I mean do we really need people distracted by ads on trucks filled with hundreds of gallons of highly flammable liquid?

I just can't wait for elementary schools or churches to get ad wraps telling me to go buy a cheeseburger or see Hellboy 2 (that'd be great on a church, no?).

I wish this was some kind of stupid April Fool's Joke. Unfortunately I didn't pull out my cellphone to take a pic and risk dying in a horrible flaming wreck.

I think bodybags should have wrap ads on them for all those rubber neckers. "Ooooh an accident! Ooohhh a whopper!"

From HollywoodReporter.

(in the actual paper there's a photo of the Shine A Light ad I saw)


I really hope the above one blows up. "Oh my god! They blew up Kenny!"

Imax rolls fuel-efficient ads
By Gail Schiller

April 1, 2008
NEW YORK -- Los Angeles-based Media-n-Motion has come up with a whole new way of breaking through the clutter, especially on gridlocked freeways -- ads placed on fuel tankers.

The company hopes the major movie studios will follow in the footsteps of Imax, which hired Media-n-Motion to advertise Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones documentary "Shine a Light."

The tankers drive their normal rounds, picking up petroleum at refineries and transporting it to gas stations in the Southern California region, all while advertising movies, other entertainment properties or brands via decals placed on the tanks.

"There is a moratorium on new billboards in Southern California, and here are all these natural billboards sitting in traffic," Media-n-Motion president Joe Klein said. "It's a win-win because the tanker company is getting income for doing nothing but making its trucks available, and the advertiser is getting its ads out there in places where there isn't usually advertising for a fraction of the price of a billboard."

Media-n-Motion also has implemented campaigns for the LA Opera, the NHL's Los Angeles Kings and "South Park" reruns for KCAL-TV Los Angeles. The cost of a campaign is about $10,000 a month, compared with about $45,000 for a billboard.

Greg Foster, chairman and president of Imax, said the tankers seemed like an "organic fit" for "Shine a Light," with "the Rolling Stones, Imax and the sort of power of it all."

"One of the things that we've tried to do is to differentiate our experience from a marketing point of view by breaking away from the clutter," Foster said. "When you see the same things over and over again, your eyes sort of glaze over. It's virtually impossible for your eyes to glaze over when you see a tanker truck 10 feet tall with Mick Jagger on it rolling down the San Diego Freeway."

Anyone who tries will be thwarted by The Tick.