The cooler wrap is tried and true for selling beer at the point of sale. It becomes even truer when you can translate it to any room in the house, so to speak, and create a branding background that gives your brand the highest visibility.
Tennyson Lacasio, sign shop manager at Colonial Beverage in North Dartmouth, Mass., took the inkjet printed cooler wrap to the next level with two recent projects at local liquor stores. Both projects were printed on LexJet TOUGHcoat Water-Resistant Self Adhesive Polypropylene and laminated with LexJet 3 Mil Matte UV Standard Low Melt.
Lacasio says he laminated the prints first (each project had anywhere from three to 12 printed panels) then applied the laminated pieces to Coroplast. This method helped hide the ridges that normally show through when you apply the print material directly to Coroplast before laminating.
“When you run print material through the laminator directly to Coroplast it bonds so closely that it shows the creases in the Coroplast. When I laminated the material first, it gave it a nice, fine, seamless finish,” says Lacasio.
Also seamless was the paneling, particularly on the Blue Moon background display. Lacasio says this was mostly due to the fact that the wall he applied the panels to in the new building was perfectly square. Moreover, and most importantly, this 12′ x 19′ Blue Moon mural did its job rather effectively.
“You see it right off the bat when you walk into the store. The walls are light blue, which complements the graphic and draws your eye to the back of the store. The owner just wanted to do one brand, which allows you to focus on the strong points of the brand,” says Lacasio. “The image is not pixilated at all and it’s very impressive to stand right in front of it. After we installed it, people were walking out of the store with Blue Moon and they commented on the enticing feel of the image.”
As per usual Lacasio paid special attention to brand details in the designs, including such minutia as the types of glasses in which you serve the beers.
The other two wall murals – featuring Coors Light, Miller Lite and Leinenkugel’s – are on either side of a walk-in cooler door. The Coors Light mural, themed as an American fall, is 8′ x 13′. The Miller Lite/Leinenkugel’s mural, themed as a German Oktoberfest, is 8′ x 10′.
“Fortunately, they’re placing a minimal amount of cases at each display and replenishing them regularly so that you can see most of the display from just about anywhere in the store,” says Lacasio. “I had huge canvases to work from, which makes all the difference in wall branding graphics.”
