Local startup Wrappr drives car wraps for outdoor media arena

Startup brothers Liam and Jonte Shaw are gaining momentum with Australia’s top brands, having helped upsurge the reputation of wrapped cars as important outdoor media assets. In this article, Liam elaborates on the inception of Wrappr, its offerings, popularity and collaborative appeal; and explains the ways in which he sees wrapped cars can influence brand promotion.

The idea to launch Wrappr came to Liam during his role as Head of Intelligence at Foodora, where he managed the national strategy and planning for the company.

“When our marketing team at Foodora planned to run a car wrapping campaign, I took the opportunity to pilot a niche version of the idea that was to become Wrappr, with my brother Jonte,” says Liam.

Within a month the two brothers had recruited 20 advocates in Brisbane, while living and working in Melbourne.

“Over that time period, Foodora were also running traditional outdoor media (tram wraps, bus wraps, billboards and station domination campaigns) in Melbourne and Sydney, and were investing equal amounts into online advertising across all three cities. Therefore we had a nice split test setup where we could gather some insight into how effective Wrappr was and whether it would provide tangible value for brands if we were to make it a real business down the line,” explains Liam.

The results were incredible.

Over a six month period, Brisbane’s sales grew 108%, Melbourne’s 34% and Sydney’s 1%. Melbourne and Sydney received 80% of the out of home budget, and Brisbane 20%. This meant that 20% of out of home investment resulted in about three times more growth than the 80% did.

“This result was made even stronger, because the same online strategy was being used across all three cities, making Wrappr the major independent marketing variable,” he says.

Foodora’s country manager gave the brothers a positive testimonial stating that Wrappr was a great way for the company to do out of home advertising for a fraction of the cost of traditional above the  line marketing.

“It was also great for focusing marketing strongly on one area and targeting audiences with much more precision than otherwise would be possible in out of home,” the statement said.

When Liam finished up at Foodora, he and Jonte decided that their pilot, combined with the very favourable market environment, provided enough reason to officially launch Wrappr and make it into a serious business.

When asked what point of difference Wrappr provides to traditional outdoor media systems, Liam explains: “Wrappr is here for marketers who want to own a local area.  We are the best option for this goal, because there are two things that we offer which traditional outdoor does not.

“One, Wrappr is surprising. People will see your cars popping up at the shops, on the street, in traffic, at school pickup, at the gym, at local sporting matches, etc. We believe this contributes to more quickly causing what most people know as ‘the new car effect’. Once you catch someone’s attention with your wrapped car, you’ll start seeing it everywhere.  In comparison, traditional outdoor is always in the same location - on the side of a road or a bus.

“Our second point of difference is our advocates, the people who drive the cars and who match the ideal persona the brand is looking for. According to Nielsen, the most trusted advertising medium is other people. As a social species, we are constantly looking to people around us to decide what brands we should trust and which ones we shouldn’t. This is the basis for fashion trends and influencer marketing.

“Therefore, we don’t just let anybody promote a brand on their car. Brands carefully curate their advocates based on over 50 criteria to arrive at their ideal persona. One of the most important criteria is ‘what does this person think of my brand?’ Because our advocates are surveyed extensively, and answer NPS questions for over 150 leading brands, we can provide this level of persona matching. For example, if tomorrow Aldi came to us and wanted to do a campaign, we’d be able to match them with over 200 people who had rated them a 9 or 10 out of 10, and could curate the list further based on Aldi’s target persona.
“Brands also have the opportunity to educate advocates on their key values and selling propositions. We even have one brand who gives weekly free product to all of their advocates!”  

Liam believes that since every social encounter experienced by advocates involve people building associations between the advocate and the brand they’re promoting, Wrappr has a very strong advantage.

“We know that our advocates will have on average 10-20 conversations about the brands they’re promoting per month, which is on top of the countless shorter encounters. These social encounters are the cherry on top of the hundreds of thousands of monthly advertising impressions each advocate will generate,” he says.

In terms of future aspirations, Liam and Jonte hope to continue to expand Wrappr and increase its impact.

“Whilst we’re a for-profit company, we are thrilled that Wrappr has two by-products that help local communities and the environment.

“The first is that through Wrappr everyday people earn a really good passive income. Most Wrappr campaigns will offer $400-$550 per month for advocates who simply have to drive as they normally would. This is money that previously would have gone to big corporations, so we’re proud to be able to have this level of impact for everyday Australians. $500 per month represents a 9% pay rise for the average Australian, so it’s quite significant.

“The second is that we are able to positively impact the environment by offsetting the carbon emissions for two cars for every one Wrappr car we have on the road. As we grow, we would like to expand this offering to include the same promise for all of our operations. We firmly believe that being ‘carbon-neutral’ is not enough, and that companies should leave our environment better than they found it,” explains Liam.

The brothers have many plans to continue to innovate at Wrappr. Liam likens Wrappr’s innovation strategy to the strategy of poker. “Poker is about making educated bets in the face of uncertainty. At any one moment, you have a distribution of possibilities that you need to quickly calculate in your head in order to make the best play. Likewise, with Wrappr, we always have numerous paths we might decide to follow, and following any path has an opportunity cost.”

He believes that most top business leaders innovate subconsciously or consciously on a ‘bullets vs cannonballs’ framework, but poker gives an even better framework.

“Businesses will fire ‘bullets’ to see if they’re effective, and if they are they will then invest more and fire a ‘cannonball’. But to achieve even better results, the lesson from poker is that we should quantify our uncertainty and size our bets appropriately.