Markex Show
Posted at 07:09 PM on 16 Jun 2009 under News
Last week was the Markex show, this is the marketing industries annual show and a chance for all the main suppliers to the marketing industry to launch their new catalogues and showcase some new products and ideas. The show was held at the Sandton Convention centre and is always an enjoyable experience for someone who loves marketing and branding. A few things caught my eye at the show and one of them that I think will become huge next year is EL branding!
EL stands for Electroluminescent and EL devices are actually lamps. They emit light, but they are unlike any traditional lamp, instead of creating light by heating a filament (as in an incandescent light bulb) or by charging a gas field (as in a fluorescent or neon tube), EL relies on phosphorescent materials which glow when exposed to a small electricity. Electroluminescent technologies have low power consumption compared to competing lighting technologies, such as neon or fluorescent lamps. This, together with the thinness of the material, has made EL technology valuable to the advertising industry. Relevant advertising applications include electroluminescent billboards and signs. EL manufacturers are able to control precisely which areas of an electroluminescent sheet illuminate, and when. This has given advertisers the ability to create more dynamic advertising which is still compatible with traditional advertising spaces. Animated effects that are possible with EL include flash or blinking where one or more lamps light up intermittently. When done in sequence, the human eye will detect movement in an image. What this means to the advertising industry is that a normal, sign, billboard or even a branded vehicle can have dynamic illuminating properties that will be much more effective in the quest to capture someone’s attention in a flooded advertising industry.
Want your own EL branding, chances are you already have it; EL has been used in vehicle instrument panel displays since 1966. Now imagine taking EL outside your car and capturing the attention of every person driving past you. Yes it is legal and can be done!
A 1966 Dodge charger instrument panel (the first of its kind)
Check out this video of an EL branded car, and watch this space for more some of the first EL branded vehicles in South Africa. If you are keen to add EL to your branding arsenal drop me a mail.