General election this year?

If the political pundits are to be believed we will be having a General Election sometime between June and November this year rather than in January 2025.

So what, if you are a regular reader of our Blogs, has this to do with MVTech? Well, I can assure you that we’re not wading into the political arena however much a Multi Vehicle Technology Party may appeal to us!  What you will however be aware of is our love of and involvement in the use of exhibition and promotional vehicles for achieving successful roadshows. The promotional vehicles we have created over the years have helped an incredibly diverse range of companies, products, and organisations to promote themselves at events and other locations where people either gather or pass by.

In summary we are used to taking a marketing brief, looking at the objectives, the market and working through the strategies to achieve a client’s goals.

So, try stepping into the shoes of a political party campaign planner and you’ll see they face the very same issues as any marketeer promoting their products.

Political campaigners have their defined target market of 650 constituencies covering 93,354 square miles with around fifty million registered voters to appeal to. Records show only 67.3 % were sufficiently motivated to turn out to vote on election day 2019 so no one was running a hugely successful campaign!

And it’s here our two worlds collide. In every general election to date, mobile promotional vehicles (often referred to as “Battle Buses”) have been employed to run electoral campaign roadshows around the country. These usually being used by senior figures to promote themselves, their Party, and their policies just as we normal marketing folk would be using a roadshow to promote our products and our marketing slogans.

Bus and coach conversions similar to the ones we undertake are a favoured option for prime-time TV clips as they provide a good image, comfortable travel and ideal meeting facilities into which can be install full communications and IT equipment not to mention refreshment facilities. They are not however ideal for speaking from which is why halfway through the 1992 campaign John Major decided to return to the street-fighting style he had learned as a young man in south London and carried around a traditional soapbox from which to make his speeches.

So, it’s not surprising that more bespoke mobile roadshow vehicles are called up for service. Ideal ones have stages and professional public address systems with fully branded exteriors in appropriate colours.

But we’re not just talking about the main political parties. In any general election, there are hundreds of parties and individuals seeking votes with some focusing on a single constituency and others a region. Each of these will be making some use of promotional mobiles of one description or another.  So once an election is called it can be great fun to take a look at how clever, or not, these political roadshows have been organised.

But 2024 isn’t just for electioneering…it’s for marketing campaigns too!

With Spring in the air and the weather improving (hopefully!) the County Show season gets going along with a vast range of other outdoor events and attractions taking place over the coming months and all welcoming thousands of visitors. It’s not too late to consider the contribution a bespoke exhibition vehicle can make to your marketing activities. So if you are planning to attend exhibitions, festivals or venues of almost any kind you may wish to consider changing from a traditional exhibition stand or marquee and moving over to a promotional mobile which we can base on a wide range of vehicles from buses to vans, trailers to vintage vehicles.

At Multi Vehicle Technology we specialise in the design, construction, and conversion of vehicles for promotional campaigns. If you wish to explore what we can do for you and how we can play a part in your promotional activities please call us on 0116 326 0989 or write to us at sales@multivehicletechnology.co.uk

And finally back to where we started this blog…if you happen to be one of those planning to campaign in the forthcoming general election (whenever it may take place) give us a call to see how we can provide something a lot better than an old soap box!