From View News Green Valley/Henderson:

Friday April 7, 2006

Thinking Big



Henderson-based Elite Media’s Stardust wrap welcomes Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association Convention

Elite Media, an outdoor media marketing company, specializes in large-scale advertising projects like the one seen on the south side of the Stardust for the cellular convention, which wraps up today at the Las Vegas Convention Center

Wrapping it up
Henderson outdoor media company specializes in big ideas
By MARIA PHELAN
VIEW STAFF WRITER

Forget billboards and marquee signs. When it comes to outdoor media, Henderson's Elite Media follows two rules: Size does matter, and bigger is better.
Next to the company's most recent venture -- a 55,000-square-foot wrap enshrouding the south face of the Stardust -- a highway billboard looks, well, just a little on the puny side.

"We do outdoor advertising, and we specialize in wallscapes, building wraps, outdoor projection media and sky typing," said Kate McCullough, owner and chief financial officer of Elite Media. "Basically, we specialize in the big stuff."

Big indeed. The Stardust wrap, which bears an advertisement for Samsung, is made of 350 panels of perforated vinyl that fit together "like a giant jigsaw puzzle," she said. Each panel is 4.5 feet wide by 30 feet long.

The wrap also is literally the largest advertising project Elite Media has taken on since moving to the Las Vegas Valley in 2003. It was installed in anticipation of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA) convention at the Las Vegas Convention Center, which started Wednesday and ends today.

"We're told it's currently the largest advertisement in America, and it's the largest ad ever in Las Vegas," said Chad McCullough, co-owner and president of Elite Media. "It's directly related to the CTIA trade show. Samsung wanted to make a splash this year."

The wrap took about one week to install and will be taken down Saturday.
Chad said Samsung's advertising agency, Cheil Communications, designed the image on the wrap and sent it to Elite Media on a computer disc.
"When we received the disc, we printed the image onto the panels," he said. "We do sales, printing and installation of wraps, and the companies we work with provide the artwork."

He said Elite Media worked on the Samsung wrap project for about a month before beginning the installation.

"It's literally like a big sticker pieced together to make a large image," he said. "Boyd Gaming allows us to use the building as a canvas for advertising."
The McCulloughs started a similar business in Shanghai, China, in 2001, specializing in building wraps.

"We went back and forth between the U.S. and China, but the business came to the point where we would have had to move to China full-time," Kate said. "We decided to sell our part of that business and stay here."

Before starting this business, Chad's expertise was in large format printing. After selling their first business in 2001, the husband-and-wife team started Elite Media in California in 2002, then moved the business to Henderson in 2003.

Some of Elite Media's past projects have included the printed centerpiece for the city of Las Vegas centennial birthday cake, a 300-foot image of Pamela Anderson that was projected on the side of the Palms Hotel and Casino for last year's MAGIC convention and building wraps of various hotels and advertisements on the Fremont Street Experience's LED screens before and after nightly shows.

The couple said their biggest ambition is to bring more national advertising projects to the Las Vegas Valley.

"We like to do the big projects -- it's what we're known for," Kate said. "We like that a local business can make such a big impact."

Elite Media is at 145 Brightmoor Court. For more information, visit www.elitemediainc.com.