Posts Tagged ‘bumpers’

What Makes a Good Bumper Sticker?

// June 24th, 2010 // Comments Off // Bumper Stickers

Bumper stickers
Image via Wikipedia

We can say a particular bumper sticker has a great tag line, something funny which makes us smile; there may be a great design which catches the eye; it can be promoting something emotive, such as a political or religious viewpoint, or it may be something completely unconnected with any of these factors.  Answering a question like this is very similar to giving a precise answer to “how long is a piece of string” – we don’t really know, but what is reasonable is that a good bumper sticker touches us in some way on a human level.

The majority of bumper stickers are of the humorous variety, and what makes people smirk, smile or laugh has never been defined or quantified, certainly with no more success as anyone may have with herding cats!  Typically, what qualifies as a good, funny bumper sticker is that they are short and punchy, usually very personal (as in the words, “I”, “my” or “your” being used a lot) and they have popular appeal.  It’s a rarity to find a high brow joke on a bumper sticker, but there again is something of the characteristic of a good bumper sticker – you have a highly visible sticker on one of your most valuable possessions, so you’re certainly making a statement and probably you want it to be a popular one.

There is another characteristic which we commonly see with bumper stickers – they are highly personal.  How many times do you see a sticker proclaiming, “My daughter is an honor roll student” or “My son is a US Marine”?  If we have something to say, especially if we are proud of it, there is little better than a bumper sticker to tell the whole, wide world.  Well, perhaps there is the internet with Facebook, but bumper stickers have been around for a lot longer than the internet!

Sticking with the personal theme, another characteristic of a good bumper sticker is that it appeals to our emotions.  Bumper sticker themes are rarely unemotional, usually they are the complete reverse and little else is guaranteed to raise an emotional reaction than politics or religion.  No surprise then that many bumper stickers promote political candidates and parties, or take a stance on religious views in both a positive and negative fashion.

It is wrong to think that bumper stickers are “throw away” philosophy and the product of junk or pop culture.  Many bumper stickers are thought provoking – they need to be because their brevity requires the reader to make some leap with their imagination to get the point.  While the standard, “I Love NY” leaves little to the imagination, many bumper stickers do represent a brain teasing experience as in, “If You Can Read This – I Can Slam on My Brakes and Sue You”.

We can summarize the key features of a good bumper sticker in three words – personal, emotive and short.  There cannot be any such thing as a “long” bumper sticker because the car bumper is too small or the lettering will be unreadable.  The challenge is how to make your bumper sticker demonstrate your personal attributes in an emotional fashion, and how good a sticker is really comes down to how well it provokes that emotional response with a punch.

Related articles:
Enhanced by Zemanta

Related posts

Bumper Stickers as Marketing Tools

// March 18th, 2010 // Comments Off // Bumper Stickers

Bumper sticker car parked in Santa Cruz, Calif...
Image via Wikipedia

Bumper stickers have been around almost as long as the automobile – it seems that people just can’t resist adorning their car with something humorous or a personal statement.  It seems that when Henry Ford said customers can have the Model T Ford in any color, as long as it was black, that customers took it upon themselves to take matters into their own hands – after all, the customer is always right!

Bumper stickers started life as an identifier – usually telling other motorists where the car was from – but rapidly was adopted by marketing men in the 1950’s and shortly thereafter, by the hopeful candidates in political elections.  As the 1960’s came and went, bumper stickers have become ever more humorous, more visible and much more popular as a sign of individuality, demeanor and driver personality.

Forget the internet with Facebook and MySpace which lure advertisers with the prospect of millions of eyeballs looking at their web pages – just think of how many more eyeballs are focused on the bumpers of cars every single day!

“Your message here” is very true when you consider how popular bumper stickers are, but just as with social media and internet marketing, there is one attribute you should be looking to emulate – the viral campaign.

Viral marketing seeks to get individuals to take part in a campaign but at the same time, the campaign is designed to encourage or require that other members of their circle of contacts (family, friends, work colleagues) are introduced and in turn, they participate too – one person introduces 5 more, they all introduce 5 more and so and so on.

Bumper stickers can also be used in this way, but they have to be engaging and it also helps if there is something unique about the bumper sticker which makes it a sought after item.  In turn, this allows you as the marketer, to leverage the desirability of the bumper sticker to engage potential customers directly in return for which, they get the opportunity to market your company or product on their car bumper!

Designing a bumper sticker for marketing purposes requires good design skills and a good insight into the minds of potential customers; marketing appeal must be subliminal as you are looking to latch onto an existing social trend and are in effect, gatecrashing someone’s private party.   An example would be where you design a bumper sticker providing a rendition of the flag or name of the state or town you are operating in; this forms the center focus of the bumper sticker but within the design your company and product are incorporated.  Use words such as “Limited Edition” to enhance the impression of exclusivity, and use the sticking backer to provide instructions on how a consumer can get more, e.g. by visiting a website and completing a survey.

Bumper stickers are long lasting pieces of marketing collateral, usually lasting as long as the car itself is on the road.  Bumper stickers are a small, moving billboard which you don’t have to pay for and over the life of the bumper sticker, it will be seen and read by hundreds of thousands of people, and even better, read repeatedly by a significant minority.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Related posts