Andy Brodie with his Volkswagen Transporter van, which is about to appear on 750 billboards around the UK!
You can’t put a price on good publicity, and small business owner Andy Brodie certainly couldn’t have paid for the exposure that Volkswagen is about to give him.
An image of Andy with his cherished Volkswagen Transporter medium van bearing the name of his firm, A.B. Flooring, is featured on the 27m x 18m ‘Mega Banner’ on the M4, Britain’s largest billboard site.
The 42-year-old from Watford, Hertfordshire, who runs his own flooring business, will also appear on 750 additional billboard sites around the country as well as radio and magazine adverts, making him almost impossible to avoid!
Andy was picked from thousands of customers to be one of just four ‘faces’ of a new advertising campaign for the Volkswagen Transporter with the slogan: ‘We never forget the most important name on our vans. Yours’.
The campaign aims to highlight how Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles is working in partnership with its customers. The three other small businesses involved are a heating specialist, a locksmith and a telecommunications specialist and were all recommended by local Volkswagen Van Centres from across the UK.
Andy, who thinks having a smart-looking van is vital for his business’s image, said:
‘When I first heard from the ad agency I took it with a pinch of salt. Then they told me I would be famous for the whole of the summer. It only hit home when I turned up for the photo shoot. It took so long to do it, I realised it was serious.’
Mark Hopkins, Head of Marketing for Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, said:
‘These ambitious businesses are vital to the country’s economy, so entrepreneurs like Andy are already stars in many ways. We know it’s tough out there for many businesses and we are committed to working with our customers to support them through the range of services we offer. We thought there was no better way to show this than to let them benefit from our advertising campaign.’
Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles is looking for more ambitious small businesses it can help support with free publicity through its social media channels. Interested businesses should visit www.facebook.com/VolkswagenCommercialVehiclesUK to find out more.
If you’d like to learn more about Andy or get him to do some flooring for you (his van will look good outside your house!), then you can find him @andybrodie5 on Twitter.