Recently we had an event planner from a major consumer electronics company call us looking to solve a transportation dilemma for her VIP customers. In a nutshell, she needed to transport the company’s VIP partners to the Encore Hotel for meetings throughout the day and also to CES. She didn’t want them to wait in the cab line for logistical purposes, but also the lack in experience.
As she began chatting with our CEO, Richard Fertig she mentioned that she had a concern about making the vehicles stand out among the crowd so the VIP partners would be able to know which vehicle was theirs.
I figured that other event planners may also have this problem from time to time, so I wanted to share what we’ve found to work best.
2 Guaranteed Ways to Make Your Special Event Transportation Stand Out
In most cases we recommend two things:
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Charter a unique vehicle
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Brand the vehicle
It depends on the goal you’re trying to accomplish. Are you trying to make a splash with a new product announcement? Or are you simply just trying to stand out among the crowd in a subtle way? There are many factors, but in most cases these two fundamental things will allow your event transportation to stand out.
1) Charter a unique vehicle
The event planner we’re currently working with specifically mentioned,
“We’re trying to figure out how our customers will know which vehicle is theirs without looking cheesy.”
So what’s important to her is something that stands out but in a subtle way. Not a vehicle that makes a big splash and may come off as inauthentic or lame.
Our suggestion to her was to use a sleek luxury sprinter van. Among a sea of black cars and SUVs, the luxury van will be easy to spot for the VIP partners.
If she was looking to make more of a splash, there are more exotic options we could have considered, but this is why working with a transportation design agency to match the transportation to the feel of your event is useful. After we had decided on the perfect vehicle for the VIP partners, we began proposing different ways to integrate their products into the mobile experience, along with branding the luxury van.
2) Brand the Vehicle
What better way to integrate transportation into your event than branding the vehicle itself? Depending on the feel of the event you could wrap the entire vehicle to make a splash or simply apply smaller branded decals to the exterior. In the case above, the event planner initially planned to only use SUVs for the VIP but was convinced that luxury sprinter vans were the only way to go after our call. That said, she also went over her planned budget and needed to go with a more cost effective solution for the event transportation branding. Instead of sending the van to a decal specialist or having them come to the van, we suggested her to send us the logo, and we’ll create magnets. If done right, it will not come off as cheesy and surely stand out from the other black cars.
Is event transportation typically your biggest headache?
Check out our free eBook: 9 Reasons Why Event Transportation Can Be a Nightmare (and how to fix it).
