Pucker Up

Cold temperatures and whipping winds rarely stop two things: dry, chapped lips and holiday shoppers. Both seriously come out to play during the winter season. So what better time of year to promote luscious lip balm – and to do so on a vehicle that will take shoppers out of the cold and transport them to and from stores?

To celebrate 75 years of producing chap-free lips, Carmex Moisturizing Lip Balm teamed with London-based taxi advertising company Ubiquitous (www.ubiquitoustaxis.com) to create five fully wrapped, bright yellow and red taxis to travel the city streets while shoppers make their way from store to store.

Ubiquitous contacted Carmex directly to begin the project. October through January were the months chosen to promote the product so it would cover the time where lips are the most chapped and dry from the cold air. It helped that it was also the holiday shopping season.

“All images were created by Carmex designer Sally Myatt. These drawings were then scanned in via the office’s printer/scanner, then edited in Illustrator to become vectors,” says Finty Barton, marketing coordinator at Ubiquitous.

The graphics were supplied by Carmex and delivered via their FTP site; no tweaks or modifications had to be made. A full-size, hard-copy proof of the graphic was then printed onto Metamark MD5 self-adhesive vinyl, the media that would also be used for final output.

The print work was executed by Signs and Design (www.signsdesign.co/uk), which output more than 490 square feet of the Metamark vinyl, using its HP Scitex LX600 with HP Latex Ink. Output time was 7 hours, and the print work was then sealed with a solvent lacquer.

Ubiquitous handled the installation, with two fitters over a 3.5-hour time period.

The cabs were covered with quirky phrases like, “Got a little pot in your pocket?” and “Kiss dry lips goodbye,” as well as images of the beauty product and the brand’s logo. Passengers and passerby were encouraged to tweet a picture of the brightly-colored cabs to Carmex (@ilovecarmex , #CarmexCabs) for a chance to win some products to pucker up to.

UBIQUITOUS
www.ubiquitoustaxis.com

SIGNS AND DESIGN
www.signsdesign.co/uk