Promotional Vehicles Part 2: Cars for Advertising Food Products

As we saw in last week's introduction, which you can find here __Promotional Vehicles: Marketing On Wheels__, promotional vehicles have been widely used in the USA and Europe to advertise the most diverse products. In this episode we are going to present the most extravagant vehicles created for food sponsorship of all kinds. One of the earliest examples is certainly that of Milwaukee's Luick Dairy, a company that during the 1930s had an unknown number of vehicles built in the likeness of the milk bottle it marketed. It is unclear whether they were used more for deliveries or for promotional purposes, although a visible hatch in the rear of the truck indicates the possibility of the former. Clear and strong, however the message.

In Europe, this type of promotional vehicle took off in the post-war period, especially on the occasion of the Giro d'Italia cycling race that started in 1946. Television was not yet widespread in Italy, in fact regular service did not begin until 1954, and what better occasion could there be than to take advantage of a caravan travelling between major cities through wings of crowds awaiting the arrival of the cyclists? So the Simmenthal canned meat brand decided to outfit Fiat 1100s with the likeness of their own canned meat packages and even a beef snout on the roof.