School buses are among the experiential marketing industry’s earliest rides. In fact, a quick flip back in our archives to 2002 will reveal a Peeps tour housed in a school bus, one of many longer haul programs to emerge in that era as event budgets increased and the concept of the event campaign grew along with them (read: tours). Flash forward to last month, as Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS World Tour blew up on TikTok with a purple star-covered school bus as the hub, and it’s clear the charm and convenience of these vehicles is driving a whole new level of appreciation among consumers and marketers, alike.
“Without question, it’s the summer of school buses,” says Troy Hughes, business development director at Pure Creative Solutions, who formerly produced mobile tours at Lime Media. “Anyone from the age of 7 to 70 enjoys these, especially seeing school buses because they’ve only seen them in a certain way—field trips, going to and from school. And so, when you’re able to convert them into a totally different atmosphere, it just makes it a much cooler activation.”
Take the IKEA U.S. Ready for College campaign, which launched on Aug. 13 and is visiting 30 college campuses across the country through the rest of the summer and into early fall (managed and produced by Activate Inc.). Inside a customized, blue branded school bus is a walkable pink-walled showroom, filled with trendy, fan-favorite IKEA products arranged into vignettes that present quintessential campus living: a bedroom, closet storage, a living room, a mini kitchen and a selfie station.
Capturing those feelings of back-to-school excitement and nostalgia was central to choosing the school bus around which to anchor the tour, says Christine Whitehawk, marketing communications manager at IKEA U.S.
“At IKEA, we specialize in maximizing the potential of small spaces. Outfitting the inside of a school bus demonstrates how to utilize our products for college students who live in shared dorm rooms or apartments,” she says. “When deciding which products to highlight, we focused on small-space living solutions, both new and the classic favorites. By showcasing different room vignettes on the bus, we’re demonstrating our range in real time and aiming to inspire attendees as they furnish their spaces on campus.”
To dive into this school bus moment further, we tapped a few industry pros for insights on customizing school buses, logistical considerations, road requirements, cost estimates and more. Beep, beep.
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THE AWARENESS FACTOR
Some brands go simpler with a branded exterior wrap and an activation fully outside that keeps the interior as staff office space or private meeting rooms. Others go bigger with a “clamshell conversion,” which according to Hughes, makes it so that attendees don’t have to enter the bus through that familiar side door. Instead, a wide staircase folds down from a section of the bus wall for a more open, curbside entrance, like Lime Media’s pink school bus build for skincare brand Biossance.
“Not everything has to be a full experience. A lot of times, brands are just looking for awareness, and nothing’s better than wrapping a school bus and driving around town because it’s just something you don’t see every day,” says Hughes. “How many people are going to see a school bus that opens from the entire side? Not many. So, when you’re able to create those things, it generates a new sense of fandom and excitement.”
IKEA is doing all of the above. The exterior of IKEA’s school bus is wrapped in images of the iconic IKEA blue and yellow branded tote straps (a popular “moving in” bag for college students). Outside the “Home Away from Home” bus showroom, the outdoor footprint includes several touchpoints, such as a potting station, where participants can decorate a planter with fun designs and stickers, and then fill it with a plant to take back to their dorm; a photo op with life-size Dala horse sculptures, inspired by Swedish folk art; the chance to go “Swedish fishing” for discounts and giveaways; and a FRAKTA Bag Bar.
For Quaker Chewy Granola, Aardvark Studios produced a custom branded school bus with 3D graphics, craft activities and games built right onto the side of the vehicle so the interior could be used for storing the activation elements that were set up around the outside of the bus.
“The bus was more of a prop and a way to get the experience moved around from one place to the next,” says Larry Borden, ceo of Aardvark Studios. “Marketers forget, the vehicle look itself tells a lot of the story that consumers are picking up.”
THE LOGISTICS
On the “outside,” school buses appear to be the most straightforward option for mobile tours. And for the most part, they are. Like all tour vehicles, they’re required to be U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) compliant and insured. Often an agency partner will manage program operations and deploy teams to prepare the vehicle to go out on the road safely with the right staff and best routes (ask about all of this upfront).
In terms of timelines, school bus projects can take about four to six weeks to a few months to prepare, depending on in-house capabilities and asset availability. Aardvark Studios and Lime Media own large fleets of vehicles (each encompassing more than 160) they can pull from for various projects, but for a smaller agency like EventLink, which handled the bright green school bus for Shipt’s 2022 back-to-school tour on the East Coast, its procurement and sourcing team searches for the best vehicle asset to fit the client’s vision and needs.
“[For Shipt,] there was a very specific desire for how the doors configured and opened to create a certain flow through the bus, so we looked at a lot of buses to find the right one,” says Steve Tihanyi, cmo at EventLink. “We secured a school bus, then went through mechanically and refurbished the whole thing, like the engine, drivetrain, brakes. You also have to be sensitive to ADA requirements, and that was another important part of the bus to have the ability to raise a wheelchair up into it.”
Shipt’s school bus featured a customized interior with a colorful, apple-themed school supply, snack-hack and dorm 101 showroom, while on the outside, the brand offered a reading nook, coloring stations and a backpack packing station.
Tihanyi also points out thinking about storage needs for additional components that are set up outside the school bus. “If I’m going to set up signage and activities outside, can that vehicle be self-contained and self-serving in terms of delivering all the things to the location without having to bring a secondary truck or another trailer?” he says, which could drive up the price.
School buses can be nimble. IKEA initially planned just one route for its Ready for College tour. However, as the team’s enthusiasm for the activation grew, so did its plans, Whitehawk says, expanding to three routes with 30 stops to reach as many colleges as possible, particularly those located near an IKEA store.
While IKEA and Activate Inc. were able to work out an extended route and schedule, Bevan Mitchell, owner of Creative Coach Solutions, often has to set realistic expectations with her clients who approach the agency with aggressive timetables and wanting to hit too many tour stops.
“Even just getting it there can be a challenge, as sometimes we’ll have clients come with this schedule wanting the vehicle here, here and here, back-to-back, but it’s not possible to drive from that location to the next one and get it there in time,” Mitchell says. “[Tour managers] can’t drive overnight and then set up and run the next event. You have to build in downtime.”
THE COST
When we asked the pros how much an average school bus project costs, we got a wide range of answers. On the low end, one agency said it would cost about $40,000 to wrap a school bus and activate it as essentially a photo op prop for one day. For securing a school bus and handling its refurbishment, another said it would cost between $60,000 and $75,000. For a more invasive buildout that involves replacing walls and adding steps, as well as being on the road for two months, it can cost close to $200,000. And then we got a quote in the multimillions.
“Costs for a school bus activation come down to two main deciding factors: finish out and duration. How long are we on the road, and how crazy do you want this to look?” Hughes says. “The sky’s the limit when it comes to creativity of any asset. I’ve been able to render and create projects using school buses that had lifted LED screens coming out of the side of it, stuff that had smoke, fog and fireworks. When it comes to those ideas, we level-set with the client to talk about the experience they want to get out of this and find that balance to what they can do, how much they can spend and what we can provide.”
Borden says it’s hard to come up with an average program cost because a lot of factors are involved, like having to take seats out, adding generators, putting in air conditioning and heating elements, and deciding how long the tour runs and where it goes.
“It depends. Are we doing a one-week program for New York Fashion Week? Are we doing a three-month program on the East Coast? Are we doing a 12-month program around the entire country? The cost per comes down the longer you go,” he says. “If your fabrication costs $250,000, and you only do one event for three days, you have to take that $250,000 and apply it to those three days. But if you’re on the road for a year, you can divide that same fabrication by 12 months. The longer you’re willing to commit to being on the road, the cheaper we can give you per week or per month. It is incredibly expensive to do a one-week program.”
“At IKEA, we specialize in maximizing the potential of small spaces. Outfitting the inside of a school bus demonstrates how to utilize our products for college students who live in shared dorm rooms or apartments.”
–Christine Whitehawk, Marketing Communications Manager, IKEA U.S.
RENTING AND REPURPOSING
They all do agree that most brands choose to lease the school bus rather than own it because “they don’t want to have to deal with it or manage the maintenance,” Tihanyi says. Storage, upkeep and insurance requirements were some of the ownership limitations mentioned, but a benefit of renting a vehicle asset is its repurposing for future projects once the activation is completed.
Mitchell says Creative Coach Solutions tends to reuse shelving and items with removable wraps like desks or tables, but with custom, branded items, it can be difficult to repurpose into another activation. Still, the vehicles themselves offer a kind of bare-bones template to start the creative process over.
“We support local community groups in addition to our fabrication team that help us strip all the vinyl and demo the inside of the asset after the activation,” says Todd Herndon, chief revenue officer at Lime Media, which will sometimes take an experience that’s in a vehicle, move it out and donate it to local organizations like the Boys & Girls Club or the YMCA.
But if a brand does decide to purchase the custom school bus and its components, Borden says Aardvark Studios has a whole fulfillment and storage warehousing system just for that.
At the end of the day, Tihanyi says there are three questions to keep in mind when choosing a school bus for an activation or mobile tour: How do you make it creatively compelling, can it provide the kind of activation you need it to provide, and what’s the cost to secure, outfit, maintain and move it around the country? Or as Hughes puts it, it’s all about jumping on the latest trend.
“No one wants to be first; they want to be second because they want to see what it looks like for someone else to try it,” he says. “Then, when they see it, they’re like, ‘OK, we want to do that.’ That’s how the school bus was once Olivia Rodrigo’s went on the road. People saw it all over TikTok, and now people are asking, ‘Hey, can we get one of those school buses, as well?’ Like I said, it’s the summer of school buses.”
We hear Airstreams are set to overtake the school bus this coming year. Maybe we deep dive there next?
Photo credits: Aardvark Studios; IKEA U.S.; Lime Media; Shipt
This story appeared in the Fall 2024 issue
