CASE STUDY

How Tombras Turned Moving Trucks into Smart Billboards Using AI

The best ideas often start with "What if?". For advertising agency Tombras, that question led to something unprecedented: moving trucks that could speak the language of every New York neighborhood they passed through. Not in a creepy way – in a way that made people stop, smile, and think differently about storage and moving.

From Podcast to Breakthrough

Sometimes inspiration strikes in unexpected places. For Tombras' creative team, it was an episode of "How I Built This" where PODS founder Peter Warhurst mentioned that their moving containers were essentially rolling billboards. That casual comment sparked an ambitious idea: what if those containers could change their message based on where they were in New York City?

Making the Impossible Possible

Here's where things get interesting. They needed to create thousands of unique messages for hundreds of New York neighborhoods, then deliver them in real-time as trucks moved through the city. And do it all in 12 days.

Instead of following conventional methods, Tombras embraced AI throughout their process. They used Gemini to analyze thousands of data points and generate a focused creative brief, which helped them create 6,000 unique lines of neighborhood-specific copy. But they weren't just letting AI run wild. Every piece of copy was curated by human experts who understood New York's unique character.

The real magic happened when they built a custom API using Google Cloud Platform that could change the truck's display in real-time based on location - imagine a neighborhood-savvy DJ, but playing perfectly tailored ads instead of music.

Results That Turned Heads

Calvin Fields, VP of brand and media at PODS, puts it simply: “Not only were we able to reach customers across the Big Apple, we have found a new way to engage consumers, which is evident from the results.”

The impact was immediate:

• 60% increase in website sessions

• 33% jump in quote requests in the NYC area

• Coverage of 299 neighborhoods in just 29 hours

• Biggest weekly year-over-year lift for PODS in New York in years

Beyond the Campaign

This wasn't just a successful campaign – it was a paradigm shift. Tombras has since built their own AI suite of applications, not to replace human creativity, but to amplify it. The key lessons?

• AI works best as a collaborative tool, not a replacement for human creativity

• Cross-functional team integration becomes even more crucial with AI

• Real-time personalization at scale is now achievable - and powerful

• The right AI implementation can dramatically speed up traditional processes

The Takeaway

“The process, for us as an agency, was incredible, because we started understanding where Gemini could play more of a part and where humans could play more of a part,” said Tombras’ executive creative director Avinash Baliga, referring to the agency’s direction and curation of Gemini’s outputs.

And it went beyond smart technology. It was about creating thousands of meaningful connections with New Yorkers, one neighborhood at a time. For marketers and agencies watching from the sidelines, the message is clear: The future of advertising isn't about AI versus creativity – it's about using technology to make human insights resonate at unprecedented scale. Even if that scale happens to be on the side of a moving truck.