Pedal-powered advertising – a new medium

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Business: Biking Billboards
Owner: Andrea Lieberman
Industry: Marketing & Advertising

If you’ve spent much time downtown, at neighborhood farmers markets or at local events in the past two years, you’ve probably seen the mobile billboards being pulled around town on bicycles.

The highly-visible yellow-and-black color scheme and friendly, personal engagement is hard to miss.

Behind this simple yet effective form of advertising is a Seattle-based company called Biking Billboards – an out-of-the-box idea developed by a mother and her teenage son.

When Andrea Lieberman’s father passed away in 2009, she inherited “some horrible real estate decisions,” including a 96-unit condo building on the Eastside.

With the economic downturn and no budget for landscaping, let alone marketing, Lieberman was having a hard time selling the condos.

One day, as she was headed to the property to do some yard work herself, she noticed a crowd filing into the Chateau Ste. Michelle grounds for a summer concert.

“I thought, ‘There’s my target demographic! How do I get in front of them?’” recounted Lieberman.

She thought about hiring a pedicab –with billboards promoting her condos on its side –to offer rides to the concert goers. But it didn’t work out. That’s when her teenage son, Jace, decided he would do it. He fashioned a plywood sandwich board onto an old Burley bike trailer, and rode by the concert goers throughout the summer.

“So Jace essentially started the business,” said Lieberman. “I thought, you know, it’s a good college resume builder but it grew and grew!”

When Jace got too busy preparing for college, Lieberman took the biking billboard concept to the next level, and created the business.

Today, two-and-a-half years later, the business has moved out of Lieberman’s garage and into a University District-based hub. It’s also expanded to having a presence in Portland and “pop-ups” at events like SXSW and the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. The client base includes local organizations such as the Woodland Park Zoo and the Seattle Symphony as well as big companies such as T-Mobile and Pemco.

“It has been surprisingly successful,” said Lieberman, whose previous work experience includes everything from travel writing to fundraising to real estate.

The concept is simple: carefully-trained staff bicycle out to dense, slow moving areas where the billboards will be seen by a client’s identified target audience. Unlike other advertising mediums, Biking Billboards staff can then engage with the audience by handing out samples, flyers and brand messages. It’s mobile yet interactive.

“It’s really about unique and authentic engagement of the public with the brand,” said Lieberman, who refers to her staff as ‘brand ambassadors’.

Lieberman even brings in comedians from Jet City Improv to train her staff how to have positive and fun 10-second, 30-second or 2-minute interactions with the public.

“It’s about creating a fun and funny engagement experience for everybody,” said Lieberman. “Plus, these one-on-one interactions allows us to report back to the client about what customers like and do not like about their product or service.”

Lieberman currently has a fleet of 12 trailers and billboards, and a list of up to 70 trained riders. And manufacturing billboards takes as little as one week.

“We want companies to realize that this is a viable medium, and a separate approach to one-on-one advertising,” said Lieberman. “It’s really about the human interaction and it’s the only medium that’s truly social.”

Additionally, pedal-powered advertising is fun, cost-effective and eco-friendly as riders burn calories instead of fossil fuels.

Simple and effective – the business model seems to be taking off and Lieberman said she’s looking to expand to more cities in the near future.

Jace, meanwhile, has caught the entrepreneurial bug since co-founding the company, and has been working for Startup Weekend and Techstars.

“He still rides for us occasionally,” said Lieberman. “He’s the best brand ambassador we have, and he really loves the [business] model.”

Learn more about Biking Billboards at their website, bikingbillboards.com.

Bikenomics is a feature series to spotlight the greater Seattle area’s growing bike businesses. Know a business that should be featured? Send me an email at amrook@cascadebicycleclub.org.