Nobody likes to sit in traffic. John Cardo makes a living off it.
Cardo is the president of Made You Look Mobile Media Inc., an East McKeesport-based company that has brought billboards from the rooftop to the blacktop.
"We're the sore thumb of advertising," said Cardo, 42, of North Versailles. "Right now, we stick out."
Passers-by in Oakland, the South Side or Downtown probably have seen Made You Look's trucks displaying ads from Coors Brewing, Giant Eagle, S&T Bank and Blush exotic nightclub, among others. The trucks display their large signs on panels that rotate every 10 seconds to reveal another ad.
"I called the company Made You Look, because that's what the trucks do," he said. "They make you look."
Cardo said his business has benefitted from a moratorium Pittsburgh City Council placed on erecting new billboards in April but, like other companies, has been hurt by $4 gas prices.
"I've tried not to pass the extra expense onto my customers," he said. "I'm trying to build a company, not get rich overnight."
Michael Walsh, an advertising professor at West Virginia University, said mobile billboards are part of a larger trend in advertising.
"A generation ago, it was as if the marketers called all the shots. They decided what consumers would see," said Walsh, a former senior vice president and director of operations and finance for Ketchum Advertising, Downtown.
With the invention of the remote control, TiVo, MP3 players, and satellite and HD radio, consumers now hold the power, he said. "And marketers have discovered, much to their horror, that consumers don't like the ads," Walsh said.
Mobile billboards are part of a strategy that makes advertising impossible to avoid, he said. "You have to see it whether you want to or not," Walsh said.
The approach is becoming more mainstream, said Adam Golomb, president of the Pittsburgh Advertising Federation and marketing director at Eat'n Park.
Some companies nationwide are offering motorists cash to display ads on the sides of their personal vehicles. Los Angeles-based FreeCar Media, for instance, pays motorists up to $900 a month to display its clients' ads.
The use of mobile billboards can get advertisers to their customers better than traditional billboards, Golomb said.
"You're not tied to zoning regulations, and you can take it into areas where you wouldn't be able to get a traditional billboard, although it's kind of tough to say you ran a mobile campaign that set the world on fire," he said.
For Cardo, the company is a way to deliver a client's message whenever it's most effective. The company's eight trucks are on the road 40 hours a week, about 1,000 miles a month, and make appearances at special attractions and sporting events, including Steelers and Pirates games. At least one truck drove around the Three Rivers Arts Festival every day this week, Cardo said.
"It's an alternative for Downtown advertising," he said. "When people show up, we show up. When people go home, we go home."
