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-   -   Companies that put ads on parked cars (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/street-experiences/195440-companies-put-ads-parked-cars.html)

I had my car parked on the street outside my apartment and my neighbour’s car was parked alongside today. I came down in the evening and saw that both cars had a green airport luggage tag style ad for DriveU attached to their ORVMs.

This is just to say that I will not be using their services ever. I don’t like using the services of people who spam me, and I absolutely won’t use the services of people who think the general public’s cars are their advertisement medium.

https://twitter.com/iamabofh/status/963394124257771522

The tag in the picture is from my car, I also added a picture of my neighbour’s Swift which had a similar tag affixed to it.

But the irony is, you have done them a great favour by posting their ad here! So much for not using their service. :D

I think I'll cut them some slack. It's not as if it's glued to the car.

This is very common and I would say effective as well. As long as there is no damage to the car I am okay with this.

However one concern is that people would just throw it away and litter the road.

Yeah sort of a favor to them when you put it that way. Certainly not glued to the car but I just don’t buy from people who put junk leaflets in my mailbox / car, telemarket to me or spam my inbox.

That behaviour (unsolicited bulk marketing) puts them on the same footing as all the peddlers of miraculous pills, Nigerians wanting to make me a millionaire etc so I just ask myself why on earth I would want to do business with such people.

I was expecting a solid sticker, that tag was quite an anti climax. Anyway this is quite okay atleast they didn't jam a pamphlet between the wiper and the windshield. Almost 4-5 years back many companies also used to randomly stick small stickers on your car.

But while this is only marketing, in the old days till about 3 years back when you parked your car at Pondy bazaar and disappeared for 10-15 minutes, your car would turn to a rent-free doll store, they have stopped this now however.:D

I remember giving a piece of my mind to one such idiot and after that I made it a point not to ever take my car to Pondy Bazaar unless the location I'm going to has indoor parking. If it isn't impromptu doll stores it is local loafers randomly leaning or sitting on the car for a smoke break.

I can understand your frustration, but I will cut the guys some slack. Start-ups do not have huge marketing budgets and in the app ecosystem, they can get drowned out pretty quickly by those that have money to splurge. In this situation, it becomes imperative for startups to use cheap and effective marketing tactics. This from my lens is a perfect way for the same.

This spam is better than the spam you get on your emails/ phone from the guys who take your numbers / details on the websites you visit and sell that data. This in my opinion is some harmless spam stupid:

Which one realizes once the car is moving. It is quite annoying to seeing it flap. Then at the next light, one has to disembark and remove it. Indovation, we can call this.

They are giving a free first drive. To me, the inconvenience of removing a tag (less than 10 seconds) is more than compensated by the convenience of getting a free drive worth at least a couple of hours. I see no difference between this and the way google bombards our search results with ads, facebook populates our feeds or newspapers have full 2 page ads before you can read the headlines. You may not choose to use their services, but since they did not damage your property, is it okay to call them unprofessional? I would have been happy to get such a deal. It depends on personal preferences.

Annoying, but there's no solution unless you have safe & monitored compound parking. These ads are cheap and effective. I don't support DriveU's move, but will admit that it's a well-designed & thought out ad (first drive free, work from backseat etc.). Clearly some effort was put in versus the stupid flyers we sometimes see placed below our wipers.

I'll tell you what's uglier = companies putting up 'no parking' boards on residential gates with their brand logo prominently displayed. It's rampant in our area and you can see some gates with as many as 7 - 8 'no parking' boards :Frustrati!

In my earlier business which had a retail side to it, foot-level marketing like this always brought in better leads & business than say, an expensive newspaper ad. Of course, makes a difference how targeted it is.

Speaking of budgets, I've heard that DriveU is out to raise a couple of crores.

In my building, the association has asked each flat watchman over the last 15 years not to allow such ad boards to be fastened to our gate, and to remove them ASAP if someone manages to fasten an ad when the watchman is not near the gate.

Yup, they have raised around 30cr, but I guess most of it would go towards network expansion (and thus team expansion), and technology.