Best Vehicle Design (Less than 18 wheels)

Program Name: Flipped Out
Client: Ben & Jerry’s
Agency: In-house, Turtle Transit

Leave it to Ben & Jerry’s to turn the ordinary upside down. The Vermont-based brand known for its eclectic and delicious ice cream combinations stepped up its surprise factor last summer with a touring vehicle that stopped traffic wherever it went.

To generate awareness and trial for its new Flipped Out sundae, which comes in a cup with a bottom layer of fudge, ice cream and brownies, and once flipped over turns into a single-serve sundae, last June the company wowed young urban professionals in Brooklyn, NY, Michigan, Philadelphia, Portland, OR, San Francisco, Seattle and its home state of Vermont with a branded truck built to look like one upside down truck stacked on top of another. At fairs, festivals and parks across the country, the brand used its one-of-a-kind Flipped Out truck as a backdrop for four-day sampling events in each market where it spent two days (Thursday, Friday) near the business hubs of each city, and two days (Saturday, Sunday) in tourist districts and parks.

The objective of the truck design was to capture the attention of target consumers in transit. And how could it not? It featured a set of tires shooting up 13 feet into the air, authentic truck smokestacks and radio antennae pointing at the pavement, and fuel tanks, headlights and chrome grilles mounted 10 feet above ground. The truck was created out of a standard 16-foot box truck that was customized using an aluminum façade and a number of vehicle accents and materials designed to create the inverted cab’s realistic look, like exhaust stacks, windshield wipers, truck lighting and tires.

Inside were four box freezers packed with the product for distribution; one rolling freezer was removable to make it easy to transport ice cream to consumers. Around the truck, Ben & Jerry’s set up two branded tents, tables and chairs to create a café environment where consumers could sample the sundae. It also created market-specific landscape backdrops (upside-down, of course) where photo activations were held. The photos were retrievable on Facebook.

The brand distributed 40,000 samples over the course of the campaign, administered coupons for free sundaes at participating retailers and handed out premiums, which allowed the brand to track redemption, points of purchase and sales volume. The brand also achieved important viral value by creating a touring vehicle that was so visually arresting that passersby couldn’t help but line up to snap their photos in front of it and then pass along the photos to their friends. Just like the message on the side of the truck says, “Upside-down never tasted so right-side up!”

Program Name: Loaf Love Tour
Client: Tillamook Cheese
Agency: Henry V, Cameron Johnson of Volksfab

Tillamook Cheese last year took to the streets with a custom-restored 1966 Volkswagen Bus in order to help people who aren’t regularly exposed to the brand taste the product and hopefully, “fall in loaf.” The overarching goals were to share product samples, recipes, coupons and encourage people to join the official Tillamook Fan Club. To bring the objectives to life, the brand built three (with one more on the way) of the buses to resemble a loaf of Tillamook Cheese. Each bus started out as a junkyard wreck and was sandblasted down to the bare metal with the rust and dents repaired before the brand cut a four-foot section from the middle, removing the cargo doors and middle seat. This necessitated shortening the clutch and accelerator cables, the brake lines and wiring harness. Each restoration took approximately nine weeks.

The buses are the same proportions as a baby loaf of Tillamook cheddar. And, after careful color matching, they are also the same shade of orange as the cheddar cheese, and styled to reflect the exact logos, typefaces and dimensions of the Baby Loaf packaging. The vehicles, which are still on the road, are magnets for photo activation and sampling events, helping Tillamook hit new and existing consumers all over the country. Early attendance figures show the tour is averaging nearly 1,000 visitors per day and registering nearly 10 percent of guests for the fan club.

Program Name: MXT
Client: Red Bull
Agency: In-house, Agile Vehicle Modifications, Kama Industries

In order to boost brand awareness among consumers and make the brand more approachable, Red Bull created four hardcore dj SUVs—large in stature and equally ready for off-road or city cruising.

To build it, the brand converted an MXT from a truck to a SUV, with the roof rising up to expose a complete A/V dj setup, with two 37-inch LCD televisions behind the dj, two LCDs off the tailgate, Xbox stations, two DVD players, wireless mic setup and audio/video switchers allowing any one piece of content to be routed to one or all LCDs along with audio inputs and outputs. The vehicle also had its own power source with shore power hookup available, and of course a cooler for cold product at the driver’s reach. The whole thing could be set up in less than five minutes.