ASI Promobile On Display at Chicago Show

ASI Chicago kicks off serious summer fun with first Art Car decorated with promotional products

TREVOSE, PA – July 14, 2014 – The Advertising Specialty Institute^® (ASI) will show off the industry’s first Art Car at ASI Chicago this week with the debut of the ASI Promobile.

ASI employees glued popular promotional items like stress balls, key chains, car magnets, mouse pads and pens donated by ASI member companies to a used Mazda and then drove the car over 750 miles from ASI headquarters outside Philadelphia to Chicago. The car will be on display in the Product Showcase area at the ASI Show Chicago, Tuesday, July 15 through Thursday, July 17 at McCormick Place, West Building, Halls F1 and F2.

The Twitter hashtag is #ASIpromobile. The industry can follow/like/share posts about the Promobile’s adventures on ASI’s Facebook page and on Pinterest here and here. To see how ASI created the car, watch the time-lapse video on YouTube.

“There’s no better time than summer to tackle an offbeat project, all in the name of fun,” said Timothy M. Andrews, ASI president and chief executive officer. “In that spirit, ASI created an ‘Art Car’ to drive attention to our industry’s creativity. Think of it as our ‘moving billboard’ advertising the industry.”

Anyone attending the Chicago show can sit in the Promobile and take photos. Goals of the Promobile project are:

• Generate buzz through a social media campaign
• Show off the industry’s creativity in Chicago – a city known for its art
• Attract media attention
• Open discussions about the industry and promotional products
• Make people smile

ASI is the largest media, marketing and education organization serving the $20.5 billion promotional products industry, with a network of over 25,000 distributors and suppliers throughout North America. Its Promobile campaign, “Driving Serious Fun,” is a nod to industry innovation and to the low-cost, high return value of logoed items, which are generally given out free by companies and non-profits to publicize their brand or event or to thank employees and clients.

The following companies donated products to the Promobile:

• Prime Line, asi/79530
• Digispec, asi/49716
• All-In-One, asi/34256
• Footprints USA, asi/55030
• PromoMatting, asi/35750
• IDProductsource, asi/62088
• Zenith Promotions, asi/98980
• Nationwide Promotions LLC, asi/73464
• Chulani Promotional Products Inc., asi/45100

Art Cars can be any type of street-legal vehicle decorated or painted by its owners. The tradition dates to VW buses decorated by artistic hippies in the ’60s all the way to mutant vehicles on the Playa at the annual Burning Man festival.

All told, the ASI Promobile project took nine willing employees, 10 tubes of silicone glue, six rolls of painter’s tape, 50 pairs of gloves, two cases of bottled water, three cans of Rustoleum paint mixed with playground sand to resemble asphalt, lots of very loud rock and roll, six fans for ventilation, a drill, a sander, a sense of humor and a ton of patience.

The car was purchased by ASI from McCafferty Ford dealership in Langhorne, PA.

The ASI trade show in Chicago is celebrating its 15th anniversary. ASI Chicago expects 715 exhibitors (with 105 new this year), about 4,000 attendees and 22 distributor meetings. Highlights include a keynote by artist and entrepreneur Erik Wahl called “The Art of Vision and Leadership: Awaken Your Creativity” at 8:30 a.m. Thursday and a half-day session with business guru Stephen M.R. Covey, “Selling at the Speed of Trust” at 9 a.m. Tuesday.