It’s not always easy to see how you can promote your business: if you’re a plumber then you have contact details on the side of your van; if you’re a baker you put Bakery above your shopfront or market stall, but many businesses these days are more difficult to showcase.

How does a horse-sitter (somebody who exercises horses while their owner is unable to) or a pilates instructor or a public speaking coach get the kind of publicity that other businesses rack up simply by having a shop or vehicle?

It may require a certain amount of ingenuity. If you’re a horse sitter or dog walker, it may be worth getting customised clothing for the animals you work with: dog jackets and dog T-shirts are big fashion business, as well as ideal promotional surfaces, and giving the owner of your dogs a free garment for their animal can help spread your message to others.

For a Pilates instructor, sponsorship may be a great way to go: offering a free session to the local bowls club or running group, followed by having your logo and contact number on their club clothing, is an effective way of enhancing a local visibility and spreading the message to likely clients. It allows you to become identified with something that is positive (sports for older people or community fitness) and can lead to opportunities such as having a stall at a race or local competition.

For a speaking coach, why not consider sponsoring a schools debate – getting children involved in public speaking can lead to a lot of free publicity, local newspapers, TV and radio always love to feature kids doing something interesting and positive and if they are wearing clothing branded with your logo, that can be a lot of free publicity!

Twice in recent days, promotional clothing has hit the headlines for the wrong reasons. To begin with, one retailer managed to list T-shirts for sale that appeared to predict a win in the upcoming England v Scotland match!

It appears that an online stock checking system was incorrectly implemented, so that a promotional T-shirt that had been designed to commemorate the 2008 Calcutta Cup win by Scotland were reoffered for sale, in relation to the opening Six Nations match which has yet to be played. Last time the two sides met, England won.

Scotland fans seem to have decided that relisting old T-shirt was a bad omen: the Scots have a story that many companies produced commemorative ties and sportswear based on a confidently predicted English Grand Slam victory in 1990, which had to be destroyed when Scotland won 13-7. The parallels have left many superstitious Scotland supporters very unhappy!

Also making negative headlines is the new ruling that New York City police officers cannot wear, own or possess anything that carries the famous NYPD shield, unless that item is an official uniform component. The ban has caused an outcry, as many officers chose to wear non-official shield-bearing clothing when they are off duty, as a sign of solidarity, particularly since 9/11.

A spokesman for the NYPD said, “The department wants to deter the unprofessional appearance associated with unauthorized police-related logos and slogans.” However, the president of the police union claims that the ruling is nonsensical and may infringe the right to free speech. Many officers are already asking why the only people in the world who can’t have an NYPD keyring or vest are the members of the NYPD itself.

Both stories highlight the risks involved in pre-empting anything, whether it’s public opinion, a sporting result, or market testing before choosing promotional material. It’s difficult to turn bad press into good news, and taking time to ensure that promotional clothing is legal, decent and accurately portrays the story you wish to tell can save a lot of negative headlines.

While Facebook is the Goliath of social networking, there are many Davids out there, getting niche attention.

One way that brands and businesses are using bespoke social media is to drive networking through only the media that will reach their ideal customer base. So for example, Levis is using Instagram, the hip and retro photographic network, to find models for its next advertising campaign. One committed Instagram user is Jamie Oliver, and Barack Obama’s campaign team use the photo networking site too, as do Burberry, MTV and Bergdorf’s, Gucci, Billboard Magazine and Starbucks.

It’s easy to see that there’s a target market there: liberal, food conscious, keen to be on trend but not a brand slave … and that Instagram carries a message that links similar brands so that Jamie Oliver can be seen wearing Levi’s jeans, or a Bergdorf’s catwalk model spotted drinking Starbucks – the linkages create interest that drives activity.

So for Redbull, for example, find that posting pictures of casually clad people doing ‘out there’ things in daily life – skateboarding to work or dancing in an underground train – links their brand to a small but dedicated social media outlet that will drive attention to their product.

Promotional clothing has an unusual role in this kind of media, because it’s an almost wordless communication – Burberry works hard to ensure its models have a distinctly British look and boosts that by setting them against quintessential British backgrounds to give a strong, if silent, message to viewers.

Storify is being used by many big brands in a similar fashion, but to wrap social media into a brand line (eg Levi’s recent foray into the way women see themselves through their clothing choices) that gives a social media boost to a brand led statement. Tumblr is another social network that is being used to integrate promotional activity, branded clothing, consumer aspirations and peer recommendation.

In a recent case, Bobosky v. Adidas AG d/b/a Adidas Group, the US District Court for Oregon has ruled that the National Basketball Association and sportswear company Adidas did not have to prove trademark registrations in a slogan they used in the Basketball Brotherhood advertisements in the USA. The case was brought by a community fundraising group in Chicago who had applied for trademark use for the slogan We Not Me in 1999. The plaintiff was given leave to proceed in trying to establish rights to an unregistered mark with regard to his use of the slogan on T-shirts and baseball caps.

The ruling came about when W. Brand Bobosky, a lawyer and community activist created badges, T-shirts and baseball caps with the slogan printed on them as part of his community development activity in Naperville, Illinois. In 2004 he registered the slogan with the Trademark Office and formed a company to licence goods bearing the slogan. When Adidas created their promotional campaign “Basketball is Brotherhood,” in 2007, it used the slogan in print, on TV and on clothing and Bobosky sued.

The magistrate found that while there were trademark registrations in existence, many were intent-to-use applications covering many categories of clothing from hoodies through to sleepwear. Part of the Adidas case was evidence that much of the clothing did not contain the mark and that on other promotional garments the trademark used was different to the intent-to-use registration. As a result the court ruled that the case could proceed only in relation to the caps which bore the intended mark as had been stated.

This kind of intent registration is increasingly being clamped down on by trademark organisations where individuals register a mark and then do not use it at all or use it in a much more limited fashion than was stated in the intent registration. ‘Blocking’ the use of trademarks, especially slogans, on clothing is seen as a non-competitive practice and in a period of recession, ruling bodies are taking a dim view of anything that limits retail markets operating with as much freedom as possible.

According to a recent report from Sheffield Hallam University, the two sectors that will benefit most from the London Olympics are gambling and sports clothing. The research suggests that the UK sporting economy will expand and the clothing industry in particular is likely to grow by 15% in the next three years, while the gambling industry is predicted to grow by around 6% over the same period.

The long term trend of the British sporting industry to take a larger share of national economic activity is likely to accelerate as a result of the Olympics, and will spike in specific areas if British athletes win gold medals during the games: already Mo Farah’s impact on distance running has been seen not just in medal tallies and young people entering the sport but in an increase in sales of United Jack running vests and his trademark white-rimmed running glasses. As sports stars like Freddie Flintoff and Jonny Wilkinson develop their own sporting clothing brands, this trend will become a large part of both the economy and the fashion consciousness of the nation.

One of the greatest growth areas of sports clothing is branded winter wear, especially clothing that has UV protection against winter sun. Snow reflects around 80% of UV radiation, which is much higher than the 10% reflected by water, but most people forget to wear sunscreen in winter who would always put on suncream when they wore shorts and a T-shirt on the beach.

Men are much more likely to develop melanoma (a sun related skin cancer) than women because they wear less sunscreening products and tend to exercise outdoors more, giving them a greater risk of exposure to high UV levels on a regular basis, especially if they play team sports such as rugby or football where hats and sunglasses are not generally worn.

We’ve got used to camel, merino, bamboo and hemp as additions to textiles and organic cotton has become a commonplace choice for uniforms where companies are committed to environmental progress, but the newest addition to the clothing market is Yak!

The reasoning behind the idea is that wool from yaks, particularly Tibetan Plateau yaks is warmer than lambs wool and softer than cashmere, making it an ideal for sports clothing and outdoor enthusiasts.

The company behind the launch is a consortium of Beijing-based entrepreneurs including a former British Army officer and an American aid worker, and their promotional activity included kitting out Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, (aka the Snow Leopard) who is the first Ghanaian to compete in the Winter Olympics. He wore their fleeces and winter tops throughout the contest.

The company, called Khunu, hopes that the Snow Leopard will be as durable as their products and is donating 2% of the profits back to the yak-herders in the hope that this promotional activity will also garner publicity.

The excellent and exhaustive blog, Clothes on Film has taken its annual trip through just about every film that came out this year (and some that we’d never heard of but apparently premiered anyway) to look at what clothing tells us about character. It’s fascinating.

Helena Bonham Carter and Colin Firth both played with reality – Helena by sticking to it and wearing genuine vintage fur, while Colin insisted on not wearing a suit jacket underneath his overcoat because it made him too bulky to be a realistic King George VI. Russell Brand played Arthur Bach in suits tailored by Martin Greenfield in New York to included a wide range of fabrics and to look like Savile Row tailoring while meeting the demands of an active character on a film
set.

Several films this year also focus on masculinity, using the most traditional symbol, the plain white T-shirt as worn by Elvis Presley and James Dean and seen in Drive worn by Ryan Gosling and even by Captain America! So plain white T-shirts for men add to their sense of masculinity, but make women feel vulnerable because of the risk of underwear showing through. Putting male staff in white and women in grey, blue or black T-shirts can create an impression of gender balance.

On TV, Boardwalk Empire also used Martin Greenfield to dress its characters in 1920s style and this focus has been particularly important in giving the impression of authority, power and prestige – according to the designers, this has involved using ‘hard’ dressing such as starch, brilliant whites and matte neutrals like beige and hats. Baseball style or soft caps were saved for lower ranking characters while harder headwear like fedoras or boaters were worn by bosses. Hats functioned to reveal who had power. That’s something that businesses tend to forget – if you put somebody in a
baseball cap, they have no authority – so let senior staff go bare-headed or give them a hat with a harder profile that denotes power.

There’s a lot to learn from film … and smart companies will use a designer who has a finger on the pulse to ensure that staff uniforms convey some of these subtle messages that help boost business success and productivity.

Once again, printed T-shirts have caused a debate, this time on the football pitch. Liverpoo’s Luis Suarez has been suspended for racist language and his teammates chose to wear a T-shirt with his image on for their match with Wigan this week. It didn’t go down too well with some other players …

Paul McGrath said he was ‘saddened’ to see the Liverpool players in their printed T-shirts and would have been ‘… much happier if they had worn anti-racist t-shirts’ while Jason Roberts (Blackburn Rovers) chipped in on Twitter to ask if other clubs were now going to wear T-shirts with the image of Man U’s Patrice Evra, against who Suarez has been found guilty of using the offending language?

But Kenny Dalgish, Liverpool Manager and Suarez supporting T-shirt wearer was unrepentant claiming that he and the players were showing their their respect and admiration for the suspended player.

It’s yet another piece of evidence that shows how easily printed clothing can become part of a wider controversy – and why it’s important to ensure that your design, slogan or clever promotional idea doesn’t cause confusion or draw criticism from wider society if your intent is to win friends for your product or brand.

This week has seen the unveiling of the uniforms that will be worn by the support staff and volunteers for the London Olympics. Around 70,000 volunteers and 6,000 paid employees will wear the branded clothing which has been designed to be a clear presence for the millions of tourists who will travel to the games.

The clothing has also been designed to balance the practical requirements of uniforms for active people, brand image and promotion of London, of the Olympics and of British heritage. The case study behind the design of the clothing is a useful tool for any company designing work clothing.

The uniform is a functional outfit that divides into two categories:
1.    Games Makers who will be given a jacket, polo shirt, trousers, trainers, socks, cap, and umbrella
2.    Technical Officials receive a jacket, trousers and (for women) a skirt, a shirt, a trilby hat and a tie for men and a scarf for women.
Epaulettes in different colours are used to identify special staff such as white for medical officials, red for team leaders and green for those involved in the anti-doping programme.

This is a good idea for any company that has staff with a range of different roles and functions. Making the various accessories colour-coded helps everybody to know what their job is and what tasks others will be undertaking.

The basic colourway is deep red and purple which picks up on the themes of the regimental uniform of the Grenadier Guards uniform, the original clothing worn by the staff at the 1948 London Olympics, Wimbledon tennis colours and those of the Henley Regatta.

Picking a theme that echoes your company’s heritage is a great way to build brand values – this can be a colour, the cut of the clothing or an emblem that you build into the design to remind people of what underpins your company and why it matter.

There’s a lot of up-to-date detail in the clothing too, drawn from the latest designs in sportswear such as the cut, ergonomic seams and the wicking fabrics.

Using modern detailing such as flat seams, poly-cotton fabrics and work socks that help inhibit foot infections can all keep staff happy and comfortable at work.

As the American government faces cutbacks, President Obama has told government agencies to reduce spending on ‘extraneous promotional items’ such as mouse pads and coffee mugs. It’s not quite as silly as it sounds: each department is required to demonstrate how it’s going to reduce wasteful spending and/or create more efficient ways of operating.

Commemorative gifts such as backpacks have been ruled out except for where such an item has a clear purpose so that the logo-emblazoned baseball caps and printed T-shirts many American agencies give away to both staff and visitors may now become rare items. However some branded clothing has been given a special status: the printed jackets FBI agents wear on raids will remain because they are classed as ‘essential work-related clothing’.

So how can the average business be sure that it’s not wasting money on inappropriate branded clothing? Customer or staff research in advance of placing an order is key to getting it right. There’s no point designing and printing hundreds of bags for your customers if they actually prefer to carry backpacks. If your staff wear baseball caps and you order beanie hats, you’re likely to find that your investment is wasted.