Gray Line Nashville, which operates the largest motorcoach fleet in Middle Tennessee, won the honor having one of its vehicles wrapped with the Motorcoach Council's industry promotional graphic campaign.
In December 2009, the not-for-profit Motorcoach Council allocated $75,000 of its charitable contributions received towards a program to purchase one “Get Motorcoachified” bus wrap graphic for each of their 80-plus Founding Partners, in an effort to kick start their campaign and encourage participants to display their coordinated advertising messages on 33,400-plus motorcoaches — their rolling billboards — as they travel the U.S.
Each of the Council’s founding partner state and national associations were given one free bus wrap, which they could award to a member operator at their discretion. Albeit a random selection lottery was used to select the winner of the Tennessee Motor Coach Association’s (TMCA) full coach wrap, several association members felt it was fate that Patty Levering of Gray Line Nashville won the prize (a $5,000 value).
Just last year, Levering’s husband, Chris (now deceased), was instrumental in getting the TMCA involved with the Motorcoach Council and helped pass a vote to contribute $25,000 to the Council’s campaign to ensure its success.
“It’s a wonderful tribute to Chris to have Gray Line Nashville receive this honor,” said Debbie Neese, executive director of TMCA. “We are thrilled to support a campaign that educates the general public about the wonderful benefits of the motorcoach industry,” added Neese.
“We all know coaches provide a comfortable, fiscally sound, ‘greener’ way to travel,” said Patty Levering, “We therefore selected the slogan, ‘56 Fewer Cars Outside. Get Motorcoachified,’ as the advertising message we’d display on the sides of our new campaign bus. We will utilize this particular coach on our Relax and Ride program that runs Monday through Friday, in addition to other charter services we provide,” added Levering.
The Council hopes it’s public service announcements and rolling billboards make an impact on the road, while ultimately building consumer familiarity with the term "motorcoach" as they amuse, educate, and intrigue travelers as to the many reasons they should ‘go coach’ as opposed to planes, trains and personal automobiles.
The Council believes Americans are ripe for change and looking for new travel solutions to meet their needs and exceed their expectations for individual or group travel. Coaches efficiently and affordably move groups of all sizes to include students, families, athletes, executives, musicians, affinity groups, wedding parties, military troops and more, a Council release stated.
The Motorcoach Council believes that by banding together and pooling their industry’s human and financial resources to collaboratively deploy their public service announcements, they can create a large scale and, more significant, impact on consumers, and ultimately shift public perception.
