Wrap advertising

Wrap advertising or a vehicle wrap describe the marketing practice of completely or partially covering (wrapping a vehicle in an advertisement or livery. The result of this process is essentially a mobile billboard. Wrap advertising can be achieved by painting a vehicle's outer surface, but an increasingly ubiquitous practice in the 21st century involves the use of large vinyl sheets as "decals". The vinyl sheets can later be removed with relative ease, drastically reducing the costs associated with changing advertisements. While vehicles with large, flat surfaces (such as buses and light-rail carriages) are often used, automobiles can also serve as hosts for wrap advertising, despite consisting of more . Wrap advertising is also used in the magazine and publishing industries.

Until the age of the automobile, train companies were the largest industry to paint company names and logos for distinction on their locomotives and railcars. [1] For approximately 60 years the only choice was to paint to advertise or change the color on a vehicle.

In 1872, German chemist Eugen Baumann discovered polyvinyl chloride (PVC). In pure form, PVC was brittle, difficult to process, and the synthetic polymer had no constructive applications. In 1913, German inventor Friedrich Heinrich August Klatte took out a patent on his research with PVC. His method used polymerization of vinyl chloride with sunlight. The material was still difficult to work with and no one mastered the challenge of commercial applications.

The first attempts at using the plastic in commercial applications failed as a result of being too fragile. In 1926, Semon invented the vinyl still used today by introducing additives to PVC that made it flexible and easier to process. Soon after the discovery, vinyl was being used in the manufacture of everything from wire insulation to raincoats and shower curtains. Initially commercial-scale production of vinyl chloride (PVC) did not provide enough design and color options for it to become a viable alternative to traditional painted advertisements. Through the 1960s, the cost of vinyl advertising was largely prohibitive, and small businesses continued to use paint. However, government agencies and the select branches of the military gradually provided the industry with clients that could afford the production costs associated with the use of self-adhesive vinyl graphics. By the early 1990s, the consumer market’s primary method of marking vehicles was transitioning from paint to die-cut vinyl. Around this time new technologies were emerging that allowed printing on vinyl with wide electrostatic printers. The capabilities were extremely limited in design color and image quality. A few companies experimented with covering full vehicles, but with little success.

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