Firefly — Swappable Illuminated
Vehicle Wrap System

Overview

Firefly is a smart vehicle advertising platform that turns rideshare and fleet vehicles into mobile media surfaces. Their proposition to advertisers is city-scale reach — branded vehicles moving through high-traffic areas around the clock. The challenge was making those vehicles impossible to ignore at night, without requiring a new lighting installation every time a campaign changes.

Ellumiglow worked with Firefly's wrap shop partner to develop a VynEL™ Cling-based illuminated wrap system that separates the lighting infrastructure from the campaign graphics — a permanent base layer with a fully swappable printed surface on top.

The Innovation

Traditional illuminated vehicle builds require the entire wrap — lighting and graphics — to be removed when a campaign ends. That means new installation labor, new materials cost, and significant vehicle downtime on every changeover. The Ellumiglow system eliminates all three by making the lighting layer permanent and the graphics layer consumable.

For Firefly, this changes the unit economics of running illuminated advertising vehicles. For the wrap shop, it creates a recurring revenue stream — selling new graphic layers to the same client base, on vehicles that are already lit and ready.

The Challenge

Adhesion compatibility. VynEL™ Cling needed to bond reliably to vehicle paint and body surfaces while remaining removable for maintenance without damaging the vehicle's finish. The top graphic layer then needed to bond to VynEL™ Cling's surface rather than directly to the vehicle.

Weather and UV resistance. Fleet vehicles operate in all conditions. The VynEL™ base layer needed to maintain output and adhesion integrity through temperature cycling, rain, and prolonged UV exposure.

Edge handling and seaming. Large-format vehicle wraps involve complex curved surfaces, panel seams, and edge termination points. The illuminated base layer had to follow the same contours as a standard vinyl wrap to allow clean graphic installation on top.

The Solution

VynEL™ Cling — Ellumiglow's flexible electroluminescent wrap material — was specified as the permanent base layer. Its thin, conformable profile follows vehicle body contours the same way standard vinyl does, making the graphic layer installation identical to a conventional non-illuminated wrap for the wrap shop's installation team.

Power connections were designed for quick access and routed cleanly through the vehicle's existing structure to minimize installation complexity at the wrap shop level. The system was designed for the wrap shop to install, not requiring Ellumiglow on-site for every vehicle.

The final vehicles were showcased at the DPAA Summit Global at Pier Sixty, New York City — a major industry event for digital place-based advertising — demonstrating the system to OOH media buyers and fleet operators.

Outcome

The system demonstrated that illuminated vehicle advertising doesn't have to mean high changeover costs. By decoupling the lighting infrastructure from the campaign graphics, both Firefly and their wrap shop partner gained a platform they can operate at scale — with new campaigns cycling through vehicles that are already set up and running.

What This Means for Your Project

If you're in fleet advertising, OOH media, vehicle branding, or any application where lighting needs to survive outdoor conditions and accommodate changing graphics, the system architecture here is directly replicable.

VynEL™ Cling works on cars, trucks, trailers, motorcycles, marine vessels, and aircraft exteriors. The permanent-base-plus-swappable-surface approach can be adapted for any application where brand campaigns change but the vehicle doesn't.

We work directly with wrap shops as the technical partner — you don't need a separate lighting engineer on your team. Tell us about your fleet or vehicle project and we'll scope it from there.