A shopper passes the company's truck on her way to the shop where she will buy its product — every day, in every city, without a media invoice. At Pronaca I budgeted, designed and measured the fleet as media: two hundred trucks, plus billboards and screens, planned centrally for the whole portfolio.
Two hundred vehicles cross the country every day, past the same shoppers a billboard costs money to reach. Most organisations file that under logistics and paint. Counting it as media changes the budget line it lives on, who designs it, and whether anybody measures it.
Trucks get repainted when somebody notices the livery has faded. No design system, no budget cycle, no reach calculation.
Livery planned against distribution routes, renewed on a cycle, and counted in the reach plan alongside the paid formats.
Once the fleet enters the reach calculation, its cost per contact becomes visible — and it wins. That is the argument an agency has no incentive to make, because an agency optimises what you buy, not what you already own.
The distinction that organises this whole case: a billboard is rent, a truck is an asset. One stops the day you stop paying; the other keeps working as long as the business operates.
trucks carrying brand livery across the country
annual investment in fleet image — planned as media, not as maintenance
trucks dedicated to a single brand campaign in 2020
screen spots a month over four months in that same campaign
| Format | What it does | Owned or rented |
|---|---|---|
| Fleet livery | Daily repetition on the routes where the product is actually sold | Owned |
| Billboards | Reach and scale at the moments a campaign needs a spike | Rented |
| In-store screens | Proximity to the purchase decision, inside the aisle | Rented |
| Point-of-sale visibility | 198 standardised outlets in the livestock business alone | Owned |
Nine billboards and the screen network supported the 2020 pork repositioning alongside television.
The fleet already goes where the shoppers are. Mapping livery against distribution routes turns a logistics schedule into a media plan.
Two hundred vehicles branded inconsistently is two hundred reminders that the company is not organised. Standardisation is the media buy.
A line in the plan with its own money, so livery gets refreshed on a cycle instead of when somebody notices it has faded.
Included in reach planning alongside the paid formats, which is the only way its cost per contact becomes visible — and it wins.
This is the case I use when someone asks what a marketing leader does that a media agency cannot. An agency optimises what you buy. It has no incentive to find the reach you already own.
Fleet, sites, screens — counted and planned as reach.
Designed, rotated by brand and renewed as media.
Owned reach first, rented reach second.