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Where to Use Elevator Wraps

Where to Use Elevator Wraps

MAY 22, 2019| SpeedPro Towson

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Office buildings, hotels, restaurants, shopping malls, apartment complexes — if there’s an elevator, it can be wrapped. We’re not talking in your basic wood or plastic paneling either. Various professionals, from business owners to facility and account managers, continually hunt for ways to beautify their spaces and amplify their brands without hurting their bottom lines. It’s a balancing act that high-resolution, large-format graphics solve.

We’re exploring one of today’s emerging branding trends: elevator wraps for businesses. What are elevator graphics, who uses them and do they actually work to captivate attention, convert sales and strengthen brand loyalty? Read on to find out — after which, you might find yourself asking: Where can you not use elevator wraps?

WHAT ARE ELEVATOR WRAPS FOR?

What Are Elevator Wraps For

Elevator wraps are large-format, printed graphics created for and installed in elevators. Made from UV-cured or eco-solvent inks and printed on durable vinyl sheet substrates, they turn lift walls, floors, doors and ceilings from plain paneling systems into standout, branded canvases. Once these wraps are installed, organizations open their doors (sometimes literally) to a new medium for creative, cost-effective and highly impactful visual advertising.

There are two main uses for elevator wraps for businesses:

  1. To showcase your brand: Brand logos, messages, color schemes, icons, products, services, high-resolution photographs — you name it, elevator wraps can display it. Creating vibrant representations of your brand isn’t just for feel-good marketing either. Research shows that designs like elevator wraps contribute to the benefits of branded environmental graphics, a design trend where businesses aim to maximize their space’s aesthetics to boost everything from employee retention rates and moods to client happiness.
  2. As a revenue-driving mechanism: Owners of high-rises, shared offices, retail spaces and large, multi-faceted buildings will often sell ad space inside their elevators. Other companies within and outside the building can then market their products or services in the elevators.

The most common wraps are fabricated for elevator door graphics and placed on the externally facing side of elevator doors, but elevator wraps are not consigned to only this area. Large-format visual communication studios like SpeedPro can print graphics for the entirety or a portion of the elevator, including:

  • Interior and exterior doors
  • Interior and exterior elevator walls
  • Interior elevator floors
  • Interior elevator ceilings
  • Any combination of the above (the more cohesive, the better)

These Wraps Offer Many Visual Marketing Benefits

These wraps offer many visual marketing benefits, including that you can:

  1. Surprise visitors — in the best possible way: Clients and guests recall between 84 and 96 percent of advertisements seen in elevators. That’s a staggering media recall rate and one that many in the industry attribute to the unexpected yet stylish atmosphere created by elevator wraps. With their pops of color, pictures and text, elevator graphics surprise nearly all who step into the space, capturing audience attention and maintaining it long after people have made their exit.
  2. Utilize space to its fullest: You already have an elevator. That elevator already has walls, panels, doors, a ceiling and a floor. Why not use these surfaces to the fullest — as the canvases they naturally are?
  3. Convey personality and professionalism: Show off the distinct nature of your brand without sacrificing a professional presentation. Using custom elevator wraps strikes that important balance between brand personality and brand authority, with images and artwork designed to convey strategic business messages yet doing so in a surprising, ultra-immersive way.
  4. Boost brand identity: Pretend you’re describing your workplace to a stranger. What words come to mind, especially adjectives? Does your office or organization’s actual environment match or reinforce this description, even in the details? The way you describe your office and its work culture is part of your business’ brand identity, and it’s more important than ever to communicate.
  5. Generate revenue: Noted earlier, elevators in public or shared commercial settings make for great advertising displays. Those selling elevator space can earn a pretty profit rotating just a handful of elevator door graphics in a year.

WHERE TO USE ELEVATOR WRAPS

Elevator wraps are worked into the overall marketing strategy

Looking to grow brand awareness, recall rates, revenue and the appeal of your space’s overall aesthetics? Elevator graphics check all these boxes and then some. Consider the following range of industries where elevator door graphics and ads excel. Chances are, your business is somewhere on the list.

1. OFFICE BUILDINGS

Today’s offices have to do more than ever: attract top talent, engage relevant audiences, relay a unique selling position, create quality products or services, retain employees, brand themselves apart from competitors and leverage seamless front- and back-office operations to keep the whole thing going. Oh, and do all this efficiently and profitably.

Some buildings containing one office to those with 100 operate with elevators that see an enormous flow of foot traffic. Offices can use this busy atmosphere to their advantage, with elevator graphics and advertising that have an impact in several spaces, including:

  • Shared office buildings: Stand out from the crowd by advertising your own products or services on panels, walls and ceilings. Elevator doors make for an especially valuable template in shared office buildings with numerous floors since people tend to spend more time waiting outside an elevator — and staring at its doors — than inside it.
  • Private corporate buildings: Elevator wraps can enhance the branding and marketing efforts of your space. Large-format printing offers customization possibilities that will impress visitors and immerse employees in all that your brand stands for without defaulting to conventional ads.

2. HOSPITALS AND OTHER MEDICAL FACILITIES

Hospitals benefit from the environmental and creative touch of elevator wraps.

Places like children’s hospitals and similar pediatric-care facilities are especially great options for custom elevator wraps. Elevators can be adorned with upbeat, colorful, kid-friendly imagery, promoting a friendlier and more comforting atmosphere for patients and their families.

Likewise, door wraps in other wards can help designate floors and relay important hospital messages, like the use of an elevator door graphic to showcase a new, hospital-sponsored health app.

3. UNIVERSITIES

Colleges and universities have an array of building types across campus. From dorms to lecture halls to dining areas to student-life facilities, campus building lineups require dozens of elevators shuttling guests, students and faculty to various floors.

Universities often brand their elevators with school emblems and iconography. Elevator graphics also make for attention-grabbing displays for upcoming events and even work to showcase the campus’ mascot with bold backdrops featuring matching school colors.

High schools can use elevator graphics to display the same energy and pride taken in their schools. In other words, wraps showcase school spirit for anyone on their grounds.

4. MALLS

More than half of retailers surveyed in a recent Adobe report said amplifying the customer experience is their most important area of focus. Utilizing both in-store and digital experiential shopping strategies, retailers aim to create environments that consumers are continually drawn to without sacrificing brand authenticity or style.

Stores within shopping centers and malls face even more pressure to stand out. Perched one next to the other, mall retailers must use creative means to distinguish their merchandise, atmosphere, events and overall brand. Mall elevators serve as a prime place to do so, capturing attention and converting traffic where target audiences already are, enticing them to swing on by.

5. CONDOMINIUMS AND HIGH-RISE APARTMENTS

Residential buildings with elevators can sell door and wall panels as advertising space. Nearby restaurants, coffee shops, salons, grocery stores, entertainment venues, small businesses and more can entice people already living in the neighborhood to visit.

Combing the best from out-of-home and in-home advertising strategies, elevator wraps in apartments are as strategic as they are savvy. Expand your business’ visibility, reach new prospects and convert more leads — a formula that’s music to the marketers’ ears. Passive visitors can quickly turn into committed customers, especially if your business is within a convenient distance. All this because you placed a custom elevator advertisement in a nearby apartment.

6. SPORTS ARENAS

Elevators fuel a winning image and an electrifying environment in sports venues. Home stadiums can place images of star players on elevator doors, print action shots of game-winning plays onto elevator walls and display team titles and awards on doors, panels and even ceilings.

These teams and players are markets onto themselves. Elevator wraps contribute to their identity and legacy, crafting a 360-degree experience that connects fans with franchises. The arenas and stadiums themselves benefit too, with something as seemingly small as their elevator systems becoming part of the franchise’s identity. Elevator graphics celebrate this connection.

7. ENTERTAINMENT VENUES

In the past decade, the average consumer’s spending on experience-related services — like attending concerts, shows, amusements parks, festivals, traveling and dining out — has grown more than four times faster than expenditures on physical goods or commodities. Industry experts predict that this trend will increase.

Entertainment venues reap the rewards. Restaurants, movie theaters, concert halls, sports complexes, arcades — and businesses that combine elements from each — create fun, festive atmospheres that consumers are increasingly drawn to. Their large-format graphics should match that spirit. Entertainment venues can utilize custom elevator graphics both for in-house aesthetics and to entice new customers through elevator wrap advertisements.

8. HOTELS AND RESORTS

The hospitality industry knows a thing or two about building environments that people want to return to. Elevator graphics are one such key material worked into overall marketing strategies that help build the brand identity associated with hotels, resorts, spas and related properties.

Use wraps to complement the overall style of your hotel. Make elevators contemporary, cozy, flashy or serene with wallpaper-like vinyl substrates and images, each custom designed to represent your brand. Advertise your hotel or resort on others’ elevators doors and panels in the area as well.

9. RESTAURANTS, BARS AND CLUBS

Patrons look for good food and drink when they’re dining out, yet they also crave restaurants with atmosphere — a personality that pairs well with whatever’s on the menu. Make your restaurant or bar memorable with large-format print graphics enhancing its atmosphere. Sure, it might be the food that initially drew someone in, but it’s these graphics and the environment that will make them stay, sharing their experience at your establishment with friends and family.

Like a number of businesses on this list, restaurants, cafes and clubs also profit from elevator advertising. With wraps placed in spots like sports arenas, convention centers and malls, eateries can expand their marketing efforts using a cost-effective and locally targeted means.

10. AIRPORTS AND TRANSPORTATION CENTERS

The elevators in airports and bus and train stations maintain a constant flow of travelers. Some may be in town for only a few hours, while others could be tourists seeking a bite to eat, a store to shop in or a place to stay. Elevator advertisements can meet these travelers where they are and draw them to your business. Elevator wraps can also be used to beautify transportation centers themselves, turning them into building spaces that go beyond merely shuttling people from point A to point B.

11. CASINOS

Casinos are designed to be immersive. Everything from their floor plans to their color and lighting schemes are tailor-made to be as engrossing as possible, keeping patrons absorbed in their atmospheres. This attention to detail shouldn’t be forgotten in elevators. Casinos brand their elevator walls, floors, doors and ceilings to match overall venue themes and exude the same kind of luxury and liveliness that these spaces are known for.

12. CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS

If there’s one place a company should go all-out in experiential, brand-identifying graphics, it’s at corporate headquarters. These central offices serve as the flagships to chains and multi-location, international and domestic businesses. An organization can maintain cohesion across its branches and strengthen company culture when it employs graphics like elevator wraps in its space. Plus, since elevator graphics are highly customizable, headquarters can create iterations for their own lifts as well as order complementary ones for their network. It’s a win-win for all in company branding efforts.

13. NONPROFITS

Nonprofit organizations require the same attention to branding and identity as for-profit businesses do. After all, successfully communicating an identity is what draws like-minded donors, volunteers and partners to their efforts, ensuring that the nonprofit’s mission can be brought to life.

Nonprofits use elevator wraps to communicate their values and priorities. From food banks to afterschool youth programs to environmental activists, these organizations can display images that are on par with their missions, spotlight upcoming events or deliver crucial visual messages.

14. CONVENTION CENTERS

Convention centers, with their large, multi-stored spreads and yearly rotation of events and clients, are prime places to apply upscaled elevators. Wraps and graphics specially made for elevator panels are great to showcase a center’s lineup of events, from trade shows and product expos to academic conferences and private company retreats.

Even better, convention centers can incorporate elevator graphics into part of their overall venue-based signage strategies. The convention center that uses consistent, memorable, high-quality graphics is the convention center making a name for itself (in all the right ways).

15. CITY HALLS

Showcase city pride in the place where city pride should be most apparent — municipality buildings.

Structures like city halls can use elevator graphics in a number of creative ways. Elevator doors, ceilings and floors can hold images of important city events or beloved landmarks. Inside, elevators can list the city’s significant historical events or display directories, making it easier for constituents to find the departments they need. Elevator graphics commemorate as much as celebrate a city’s unique story and can be easily updated as that story evolves.

ORDER CUSTOM ELEVATOR DOOR, WALL, FLOOR AND CEILING GRAPHICS WITH SPEEDPRO

The SpeedPro network of large-format visual communication studios knows where to use elevator wraps for the best results. We’ve worked with partners in every industry, across all sectors big and small, to outfit elevators with branding impact.

Let’s upgrade your elevators today.

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SpeedPro Towson

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Marc Bouchard

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