that's a silly idea no no no gary they're going to be able to see it they are going to be i can
hear them they're looking for us oh they've got it quick get in you see i told you it was
a great idea put that qr code on the roof of the van when we had it wrapped in case we're parked
up near an airport or there's a someone with a helicopter flying over and they want to quickly
find the efixx website well that's your advice my advice was not to get the van roof wrapped because
there's better ways of spending your budget well and that's what this video is all about we're
looking at sign writing and wrapping of vans and how it could be your most valuable asset and to
do that gary you popped along the signs express to find out a little bit more and turn this what was
a silver van into a red van and that'll be one of the pieces of advices that we'll have throughout
this video if you want a red van start with a red van but let's talk to the experts let's go to sam
so i've dragged sam out of the office here at signs express in bedford and i've got a question
for you sam i've got a limited budget i've got a choice do i brand up my premise or do i brand
up my van what's your advice uh your van i would brand up your van first um on average your van is
seen around 3 000 times per hour busy roads in the uk so i would say that's vital to attracting new
customers okay so now i'm thinking bro i'm going to go for the van so i'm thinking i'll cram as
much information as i can i've got my phone number my website all the social media platforms all the
things i offer commercial domestic industrial work all over that van is that a good idea too
much far too much you're going to disengage the audience you want to keep it simple keep it bold
there's a lot of vehicles out there that are sign written or wrapped so you want to
stand out from the crowd i would concentrate on your brand your brand awareness is key
um the chances are that when someone sees your brand subconsciously they're going to remember it
yeah and they're going to google you so i wouldn't even think about you can put your website now you
can put your phone number on there at maybe as a minimum but if your van or vehicle stands out um i
don't see why you'd need to put that on there all right good example so the efix fan people see
e-fix they'll google e-fix stuff on my website anyhow so the website becomes really important
now if i was really being on a budget and i'm thinking about the van which part of
the van is the most important to brand up so the rear is definitely vital for example if i
am stood in traffic yeah or traffic lights yes i'm going to be staring at the rear of that vehicle
for some time and subconsciously i'm going to be taking in that brand um so yeah i'd say the the
rear is important the sides are just as important as well um but i'd say that the rear is is as kind
of a fundamental panel so good advice for us so if we're choosing between premise and vehicle we
choose the vehicle ideally we keep it simple we think about our brand being the most predominant
feature and not crowding loads of information if we go back another stage maybe the back of that
van if we were on an even smaller budget would be uh crucial as well so yeah thank you very
much no problem well you look like you had far too much fun down there at signs express gary
and ever since he got back he's been the world's biggest expert on sign writing van raps tech sizes
but i think really the true expert there was sam and he did give us some gems of advice
that hopefully we can pass on in a bit more detail yeah keep it simple is the one isn't it how many
times we've been going up and down the motorway to different events we watch of income passes
at record-breaking speed we try and work out is first of all is it electrician's van and therefore
if it is we can give them a shout out on social media yeah and that journey actually from that is
yeah can we find them on social media and we'll come on to that but it is surprising that sam
sort of summed it up because we're going down to where we're normally behind somebody
it's the back of the van that seems to be the most important area yeah that was surprising to me as
well you would think that side and the front of the van are really important in the back doors
just the back doors but yeah dead right and it you pull up in a queue and the first thing
you're looking at is the back of that vehicle that information is being sucked into your mind whether
you believe it or not yeah and it's amazing we we see all the time and again sam emphasized
it there that text size you know you put too much information on to get that information on the size
of the text shrinks so therefore you can't read it so actually you've just basically wasted your time
yeah absolutely it's the brand so you've got the brand in mind that's what you remember
maybe you've only got three seconds to remember it next thing you're going to do is going to
google search it and you're going to hope that that brand appears in that first page on the
search aren't you yeah and then sometimes a little bit of a tip there because a lot of electricians
we know that choose their initials as their company name and there's nothing wrong with
that naturally you want to do it so say your abc electrical there's a problem there you've got
your van you've got your great branding people can see you're on social media or they start trying to
google and find it in that area and what happens is a different abc electrical comes up from
a different part of the country now you can't solve that with your van but i would suggest
you try and solve it in whatever way you can make sure your social media is up to date mentions the
area you're working if you're a specialist in that area but that's something you you can correct that
but it starts with the van that starts with that journey and the number of people who see it on a
daily basis yeah it's really important but that's the brand aspect of it and how many of those vans
we've already seen in this video i've got very tiny writing that you're not going to be at a spot
in the three seconds you've got as that moving vehicle goes past you so it's the brand that's
super important and the size of the lettering is also important so they say roughly about 75 mil
in height for the letters that you can see it from about 7.5 meters and if you extend that up to 150
mil the distance comes out about 10 meters so it just shows you how important that large brand that
is on the side or the back of your van is yeah if you've got your glasses on gary you can you might
actually be able to achieve that distance but sometimes he struggles to see in front of his face
but um i mean that that's a great point you know you scale the letters to the size of a van that's
actually not much information you can fit on there and added a little exercise once with our van when
we were trying to you know we might not have got it perfectly right because we we went to the
the sign writers after we'd designed it but just doing that little test print off for something and
walk down the street and see if you can read it because if you can't read it yourself there's no
chance anybody else is going to be able to read it you suggested that we did something slightly wrong
and as gordon said he's done something wrong i'll bring that one up we like a red van wouldn't we
yes yes and uh that was i guess one of the first tips we found when it comes to budget if you can
use the base color of your van and then build on top of it it can save you a lot of money when it
comes to the wrap it can do and then you can look at those stages can you so if predominantly your
brand is red like ours is you take a red van and it would have meant that maybe that white efix was
the only thing we really needed to add and a few social media logos and we'd have probably been uh
all paid up could have done but at the moment it's difficult to get in any color van so i
think we had to uh we had to do we had us we had to stick with what we got and the uh otherwise it
was a chocolate brown one gary i don't think you would have liked that as much no so when we're
thinking about budget then there's probably like five stages we take that abc electrical you spoke
about before first of all obviously the first stage would be just to get that brand onto the
van when we're saying the sides and we're saying the backers priority aren't we yeah we're just
starting with the panel yeah so i mean you know the way vans are designed there's some natural
panels fill that up with some graphics and just basic graphics on say if it was a white van yeah
then take it to a next stage possibly do the whole side of the van okay and then if you've got a
really stand out logo put the logo nice and big on the van to obviously break up the color if you've
got a big white van or something like that and then that next stage is when you sort of get into
rap territory because you're going to go stretch things around the van but even if you've got
a white van adding a little bit of a wrap possibly to the back yeah we've said that to
your is that next stage and then obviously the full the full-blown one uh is is the full wrap
which does have some advantages as well doesn't it it does obviously it's going to look nice
because you've got all of that color but you think about maybe you've leased that vehicle or
you're just going to sell it on when you finish with it actually the wrap itself will protect
the paintwork underneath so that's a brilliant process so when we turn this van back at the end
of its lease we'll be able to peel the red away and it becomes a silver van it's a silver van
it's not a red van no red van it might look like a jamaican kettle drum but at least it's a silver
jamaican kettle drum by the time we finish a few dints in there we weren't full though didn't we
because we did do the the bonnet and we did do the roof and now when i was down at science express
in bedford and they're all across the country i chose one in bedford because it best matched my
needs and it meant that i could drop it off there and obviously wait in our case a couple of days
for it to be done depending on which of the five we've just described there for the abc electrical
it could take as little as half a day in order that you get your van back it's quite important to
us but at no time when i was down there did they say it was a good idea to wrap the roof well we'll
have to see if anyone uh there is a special qr code on the roof um that's uh that's there if you
managed to snap that we might even have a special price because we can tell if that qr code has been
has been triggered um but obviously we've come to that we've wrapped everything yes is there
any special care tips that we need to worry about absolutely yeah i wouldn't take it from having it
wrapped and straight to somewhere to have say have it jet washed okay that would be a no you'll leave
it at least seven days and if it does move at any point in that first bit to get it back to them
really quickly they apply a heat to it in order to cure effectively stick to the van it doesn't stick
like a sticker in any way it can be easily peeled back off but obviously that jet wash is 100 miles
an hour okay with that water coming out if you do take it to anywhere make sure if they're not aware
of how to deal with a wrap to get out the van and say you need to be some distance away from it
you know many meters and not to have it an angle obviously you don't want to hit the side of the
wrap you want to hit it front on okay so i've got a stairway with the karcher yeah and if
i do go near the car i'm not trying to lift up i'm not so i've got a bit i've got a loose edge
there and keep on keep on attacking it with the cartridge till the whole vans d-wrapped that's a
good tip right now i'll remember that and my tip is to get the family at home my daughter's been
washing the van by hand for me and that's the best way forward science express are all across the uk
and they don't just do van wraps do they i think the name gives it away it's signs express couldn't
say signs quickly i think i think those other things you might want brandon for your business i
know mats are popular right a lot of electricians using work mats yes things like that site boards
if you're going to be on site for quite a while so it's a sort of a static uh signage board and that
could be great on it because if you're going to be there for a while and then people say oh they've
had a bit of work done we want the same who did you use all that sort of that starts that word
of mouth process but i think we'll do any mugs stickers yeah that did a lot and we started off at
the start of the video saying not to put a sign on the actual building which you work from but they
also do that as well if you were prioritizing we said to do the fan but you name it as i
walked around there everything on the wall was unbelievable you couldn't believe what they did
you name it they did it there was tons of stuff yeah and obviously i think it's full design
service as well you need that support because a lot of people contact us and say oh how do i
get a sticker done or a logo done um we did it in reverse so we had the we i guess another mistake
we made so we had the design done first and then tried to find somebody to put it on the van
and then we learned all the mistakes oh we should have thought about this you should have thought
about this so i think uh yeah i guess a bit of clause and advice would be to approach the
experts first before you take the plunge on the full design is there anyone in your neighborhood
who's got their van wrapped and you want to give them a shout out leave it in the comments below
because they've made an absolutely fantastic job of it have you listened to this video and the
information we've given you here and you thought yourself ah that saved me a few mistakes that i
might have made when considering having my van wrapped have you recently had your van wrapped
and seen an increase in business we'd love all those comments if you leave them below we'll
try and get back to as many as we can and most importantly have you got a qr code on the roof