By Kim Chen Wiseman
Contributing Writer

It’s 5:30 p.m. and you are making your daily crawl down Folly Road. Your afternoon drive time radio keeps you company as you stare at the rush hour traffic that surrounds you. Suddenly, something catches your eye: a large truck to your right. The entire side of the truck is a sign, which just switched from an advertisement for a local TV station to one touting a chain grocery store.

Interested, you stare for a second and it switches again, as do signs located on the back and front, all advertising in full color different products and services. It’s a collection of massive billboards on four wheels which actually sits and moves in traffic with you, changing messages every eight seconds. “What a clever idea,” you think. You can’t help but notice—can you?

Introducing Admobile, the modern answer to the “walking billboard” (remember the guy working the sidewalk with the “Eat at Joe’s” sign strapped over his front and back?). According to CEO Robert Tarabella, Admobile is a growing national network of mobile advertising trucks running in more than 30 metropolitan areas, including Charleston. By the end of 2005, less than three years after the company’s launch, Admobile projects it will be running in more than 50 U.S. markets. The mobile trucks, says Tarabella, cleverly and efficiently deliver marketing messages traditionally saved for roadside billboards, publications, radio and TV.

In Charleston, local Admobile affiliate owner Brantley Harris says he is proud to be a part of what he considers an innovative and efficient way to serve his clients. “When we run one of our trucks in a route—94% of the people on that route will recall seeing the Admobile truck. Eighty percent will recall the message on the Admobile. You are not going to get those kind of results from a standstill billboard on the side of the road.”

Harris, who formerly worked for Admobile in Macon, Ga., chose to open an Admobile in Charleston because he saw that the city had few outdoor billboards, perhaps because of its focus on maintaining the integrity of the city‘s landscape. Since Admobile trucks are always moving and are here one minute, gone the next, they’re not a permanent fixture in the city’s landscape like roadside billboards, explains Harris.

On any given business day, Harris has a truck running in West Ashley and James Island, and another in Mount Pleasant. The Admobile trucks also make their appearance downtown. However, Harris sees more opportunity in the Lowcountry, and in the next six months he hopes to add two more trucks to his fleet for the Summerville and North Charleston areas.

But what are these Admobile trucks? They are basically mobile billboards that look like large delivery trucks. They’re painted black and are equipped with as many as 12 full-color ads placed on four “tri-image” signs which rotate, switching the image every eight seconds.

“There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that adding mobility more than doubles the effectiveness of a message in outdoor advertising,” Tarabella says.

Harris says Admobile blends common sense and science. “If you want to deliver a message that people will remember, you need to stand out. That is what we are designed to do—stand out. What better way to communicate a message to someone than to drive the billboard right up next to them?” says Harris.

The science, says Harris, is the fact that the signs change right before your eyes while you are sitting in traffic. Admobile boasts that its massive rotating full-color images trigger something in your brain called the “reticular activator.”

The reticular activator, according to Admobile, is kind of like the control panel of the brain and is constantly on the lookout for anything different, unusual or familiar. Admobile’s own advertisements boast that the “changeable signs lock in your focus” while the “repetitive nature of the message presentation drives recall and effectiveness.”

But what about location, location, location? Admobile appears to have this old business maxim beat. “We don’t have issues with location and visibility because our trucks go where the consumers are,” says Harris.

Admobile again employs that blend of science and common sense by looking at Department of Transportation data to find the areas and times with the highest traffic rate. Admobile will then configure its routes in the best way to deliver its message to the most potential consumers. If traffic patterns change, no problem. “We can tweak our routes to adjust,” says Harris.

Charleston’s Coastal Carolina Admobile is now one of two Admobile operations in South Carolina. The state’s other Admobile affiliate is in Columbia.

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