WILMINGTON – One of Delaware’s homegrown businesses is headed to Super Bowl 2025 this weekend as Carvertise prepares to park a “swarm” of colorfully-wrapped cars front and center at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
In an exclusive interview with the Delaware Business Times, Carvertise CEO Mac Macleod named several major advertising partners that will be seen on the cars as football enthusiasts cheer on their favorite teams – either the Philadelphia Eagles or the Kansas City Chiefs.
Those brands will include Beliv USA and Visit Pensacola, as well as others over the course of the several days leading up to and following this year’s Super Bowl event right on the public road outside of the stadium. Some of those companies will also pass out drink samples to help ramp up fans.
Planet Fitness is also among national brands using Carvertise’s marketing services at the Super Bowl; its vehicle wraps will be the first in Carvertise’s portfolio that use special lighting.
The different advertising move is a unique, event-centric way to tackle marketing needs versus the more traditional media-spend model of purchasing advertising space on cable television channels, or now digital streaming services, which showcase the main event for millions of viewers across the globe.
Through its novel marketing campaign designed around swarming branded cars at events, Carvertise can capture a truly unknown number of consumers who are not only in the stands, but others who may spot the cars in news castings, social media postings or other activities, Macleod said.
“We’re in a very changing media environment and print needs no reminding that it’s evolving dramatically in terms of its relationship with advertisers. The same is true for AM/FM radio, the same with broadcast cable… just the game is changing,” he said.
He also explained that those more traditional media-buys are not the only difference in how Carvertise is able to advertise a company’s mission – they’re also offering a physical, in person experience in an increasingly saturated digital market.
“[Digital medias] have radically changed the media spends. . . Being digital is no longer differentiated,” he told DBT. “The differentiator here is the novelty of the placement and the media format. Consumers are used to walking in the stadium and seeing brand after brand. But I think what’s new to consumers and what’s attractive to brands here is how we’re bringing the experience to the outside.”
Although Macleod was unable to tell DBT how much it costs their advertisers to place a wrapped car in front of the once-a-year Super Bowl event that reports from Carvertise’s partner StreetMetrics say could bring in more than 400,000 in-person spectators, he did say it could be significantly less than those traditional cable or digital advertising media spends.
According to Statista.com, advertisers could be paying an average of about $8 million for 30-second commercials during this year’s Super Bowl.
To make Carvertise’s “swarm” of moving billboards via pre-wrapped vehicles work for this major event, Mcleod said the process may have been easier than one might imagine – all Carvertise has to do is simply drive up to its desired spots on the public road near the Superdome, park and wait for the spectators to start walking by.
“We feel very special to have started the business in Delaware and to have grown Carvertise in this community. The media format is definitely growing and changing and putting it on display on a national, global, scale is really special to us and Delaware,” Mcleod told DBT.
“I think that our story here has been one of garnering community support and community innovation to create the business that we are. I think the impact that we have is just showing that it’s a business-friendly environment and that you can take a very big idea and you don’t have to plant that flag in Las Vegas or California. Big ideas can grow here in Delaware,” he added.
