For many companies, offering a personalised or branded gift at Christmas has several purposes:

1.    It recognises customer loyalty
2.    It creates brand recognition
3.    It offers a thank you to new customers who may not be fully engaged with the brand yet
4.    It establishes the company offering the gift as being substantial and caring.

These are great marketing opportunities that shouldn’t be neglected even when marketing budgets are tight. In fact, thinking creatively around the idea of a business to customer gift is a great way to establish some brand features that will encourage your customers to think of the company as one that supports them in tough times.

Branded clothing has practical value, unlike the traditional forms of corporate gift such bottles of wine or spirits, boxes of chocolates or the more modern and less personal approach of giving vouchers.

At the top end of the scale, monogrammed shirts, or hoodies for younger individuals offer a superb, highly-personalised approach to gift giving. It’s not a cheap way to recognise the customer’s value but for the truly valued client, it’s a brilliant approach. Think outside the box though, and see if you can select something that the customer will really value: sports clothing with a monogram that a customer can use for their favourite sport is an ideal way to say thank you.

In the middle of the market, T-shirts offer a chance to give a gift that gets worn, and is fully appreciated without breaking the bank. If your customers are young, find a young designer to style your company logo in a completely new way, that reflects current trends but if they’re more traditional, go for a classic and simple statement, maybe the company logo as a sleeve print or small embroidered detail with neat and unobtrusive contact details below it.

For the masses, if you have lots of customers and/or want to buy something that can be used for both Christmas gift and general promotional purposes, think about branded hats or lightweight bags. Don’t fall for too much novelty though: amusing images like Santa riding on your logo etc are only funny for a very short time and then fall out of favour and have no value to the recipient. It’s better to think about longevity and choose a hat or bag that will be used year round. Practicality is the key to a successful gift and you can double the promotional whammy you get from such items by running a competition that offers to reward the person who takes the best picture of their hat/bag in an unusual place or in a location appropriate to your business. Post the photos on facebook and tweet about them in your twitter account to get the maximum cross-platform marketing boost from your promotional clothing spend.

The recession means that many firms are having to forego the usual Christmas party for staff and forget about the usual bottle of tipple and box of chocs that have traditionally been given to employees at this time of year.

Instead, consider the value of investing in branded clothing for your team – it’s a workplace based gift that can benefit the individual and the company. Polo shirts or fleeces embroidered with the individual’s name or initials demonstrates that you value each person, and gives all your employee’s a chance to wear something new and exciting to work.

Personalised work clothing is also a great gift for promoting team development: it shows that you are investing in your staff and it gives them a sense of self-esteem and a long-term reminder of their value to the company.

You can even create a small brochure so that employees get to choose which item of branded clothing they would like to receive: T-shirts or hoodies appeal to the young and those who work away from the public eye but those in customer services might prefer to have a monogrammed shirt or a smart jacket. Offering a choice also shows that you respect individuality and gives your team a sense of having options and a stake in their own appearance.

Customers respond well to people in smart, well-kempt clothing too, so what benefits the team also improves customer relations.

It’s said that Brooks Brothers has dressed more American Presidents than any other clothing line, and this month it had a Scottish showcase in its Regent Street shop.

More than 300 fashionistas attended the event which featured knitwear, tweed, cashmere, ties, embroidered and embossed items and hand-made shirts. The occasion was the Harris Tweed centenary and Brooks Brothers used the event to highlight its own nearly two century pedigree, with photos of Abraham Lincoln (who got that black coat from the Brooks Brothers store), Andy Warhol and Clarke Gable, all dressed in Brooks Brother’s clothing.

It’s not just tweed that makes Brooks Brothers different – the brand has driven the search for new clothing fashions that it can import, such as bringing button-down shirts to the USA and inventing the wash and wear suit. Branding clothes with the classic Brooks Brothers logo has kept the company in the public mind as one that delivers a formal quality along with ease of wear and laundering and it has also been careful to supply clothes for TV shows that match its brand identity such as Mad Men and Glee.

This clever association of clothing, famous wearer and innovation has really driven the brand as one that innovates and yet contains the best of American heritage. Other companies might find a very different focus for their brands – more casual companies might like a figurehead who plays a cool sport to wear a sponsored polo shirt or to find a band or actor who typify the brand values and then to offer them promotional clothing to wear in public. Whatever way you play the famous clothing game, it benefits both brand and individual to be associated with each other.

Autumn’s rainfall has begun – heavy snow is projected for December and January. Giving your customers and employees with good winter wear and safety products means that you’re preparing them and your business for bad weather.

Winter work wear is a great opportunity to get your name in front of clients knitted hats, fleeces, hoodies and gloves are ideal elements for embroidery while jackets and high-vis clothing lend themselves brilliantly to printing.

All winter clothing offers the opportunity to invest in comfort and safety for your staff and clients, reminding them that your company’s service or product is around to make their lives easier. This means that they start to associate your name with being part of their solution which means promotional clothing serves a double purpose, instant solution and long term positive association with your brand.

For something a little different, creating ‘winter fun’ kits can be a good way to show customers that you’re always focused on the positive. Branded gloves, hats and scarves, neatly packaged with a cheap toboggan, make ideal Christmas giveaways, and to double their promotional effect you can run a competition where the person who sends in the funniest or most exciting photo of them wearing their promotional clothing on their toboggan wins a winter-themed prize like an adventure day on a dry ski slope or a chance to make an ice sculpture. You can even display the photos on your facebook page or company website and ask the public to vote for the winter to get a triple promotional boost from your printed or embroidered clothing.

The hospitality industry is changing rapidly. HR Magazine says it now provides one in 15 jobs in the UK, and that over 7% of the working population are in the hospitality sector – it’s also expected to be one of the largest growth areas for new employment in the next decade.

Uniforms for hospitality staff have changed as the sector has grown – polo-shirts and smart trousers have replaced button-through shirts as daywear in around a third of eating establishments and more than two-thirds of pubs and bars.

Even casinos are changing their clothing choices, opting for bright T-shirts under waistcoats for table-waiting staff and black uniforms for croupiers giving way to green, red or even purple as a corporate colour. It seems that these brighter colours are intended to create a ‘point of difference’, in allowing venues to differentiate themselves from other locations. Because they are still dark enough to take stains and spills in their stride, the green, red and purple shirts are proving popular with staff too.

Table staff are increasingly being given ‘throwaway’ clothing – ultra-bright T-shirts or vests overprinted with large messages about two-for-one cocktail prices, house specials, or special rates being offered at the attached hotel for lucky gamblers who’ve won big.

Aprons have become a big deal in up-scale dining, with pizza and flambé chefs who work at table being given special aprons, bearing their name, so that guests can specify which individual they wish to cook their food.

Some work clothing has Health and Safety implications – it has to meet the needs of staff who are exposed to the elements or work in difficult conditions. In these cases, High Visibility clothing allows the company, and the individual, to feel confident about safe working.  However, for many companies the chance to brand the outer clothing of their employees is not just about identification – it’s a way to generate public awareness, build team identity and create opportunities to add to the company’s profile.

Choosing the right jacket or fleece is important as it gives employees confidence in their appearance: it needs to be fully comfortable, easy to wear and smart. The logo and details you add to the jacket, whether it’s embroidered or printed, is the final finishing touch that gives a jacket or fleece its professional appearance.

A tailored jacket for women looks fantastic and is specially designed to look good on the female form, while a more relaxed blouson-style jacket works well for a younger workforce in a more casual environment.

Detailing on a jacket can range from a discreet logo and telephone number or website address through to large images that showcase your business activity along with promotional details that encourage people to come and find out more from the wearer.

Perhaps the most famous promotional jackets are American: the letter jackets worn by High School athletes and the ‘colours’ worn by biker gangs – they both have instant recognition factor and carry a strong message to the viewer. This is why it’s important to work with a good clothing printer to ensure that the message your clothing carries is more ‘letter’ than ‘chapter’ – printers and designers have experience in how people respond to images, colours and ideas, so calling on a reputable supplier of printed and embroidered clothing to help you put your brand jacket together is essential for maximum success.

Most pubs have a clothing rule about what staff can wear, often this comprises formal black trousers, black shoes and a long-sleeved white shirt with the company’s embroidered logo on the breast pocket.  In more prestigious settings this can include a waistcoat and in more casual ones it’s usual to wear an apron over the white shirt.

For very relaxed pub outlets the white shirt can often be swapped for a printed T-shirt with the pub’s name and logo on the front – often with promotional sales rates or event details on the back. These are sometimes even accompanied by shorts rather than trousers to give a really laid back ‘fun’ feel to the venue.

It’s usual for the employee to pay for their own trousers/skirts and shoes but for the employer to provide the branded part of the uniform, including monogrammed shirts or T-shirts. Some large chains also give permanent staff an allowance to cover laundering clothing and others provide hats, hairnets and other items of hygiene wear.

Unifying clothing is vital to make serving staff easily visible to customers, and aprons are a good idea because they allow all members of staff to be involved in food preparation and serving.

Retro clothing choices, such as frilly aprons and starched caps for cocktail waitresses or bowler hats being seen with striped butchers’ aprons in some seafood and champagne bars, can be a fantastic way to build brand recognition.

When you choose a logo, consider using a monogram. This is classically a design composed of one or more letters and it was often used as part of a signet (or signing) ring to seal documents with wax.

Today there are very famous monograms such as Yves St Laurent and Luis Vuitton which have become brand identifiers – perhaps the same is possible for you?

A good monogram says something about the business it represents – it both identifies the company and encapsulates it. In addition, a monogram has to be swiftly identifiable, clever, easy to reproduce in a variety of ways, and not too expensive to replicate.

A gold logo, for example, looks fantastic on buildings, but could be prohibitively expensive to reproduce on polo-shirts. In this case changing the gold to yellow could reduce costs while keeping the same ‘feel’ to the overall design.

Many logos are three dimensional, a design feature which can be achieved with embroidery as well as ink or transfer, and which looks particularly good on a cap or knitted hat as well as making a good emblem design for coveralls and high visibility clothing.

Simple white stitched monograms look particularly good on formal work shirts, towels and aprons, where they give an impression of cleanliness and classic styling.

A failing Norwich comprehensive school is being turned into an academy and as part of the drive for excellence, the pupils will wear Savile Row-tailored school uniforms. Designed by Thomas Mahon, who has dressed the Prince of Wales, the new uniform with a traditional logo: a school crest; a jacket and formal trousers is set to create a smarter attitude according to the new academy’s head. She says ‘The Savile Row uniform shows we want the best for the school and students. It shows we hold the students in high esteem that we have got them the best possible uniform’.

But in Huddersfield bus drivers are overheating about their workplace clothing. They want to be allowed to wear tailored shorts as part of their uniform, but recent new clothing rules outlaw shorts, although passengers are wearing the bare minimum on the hot, city-centre buses. One driver said, ‘we have asked the managers if we can change the uniform, but they had said it is not company policy.’

What role does uniform have?

Both these cases seem to suggest that a minimum standard is set by clothing, and that those wearing the clothing are encouraged in some way to reach for a certain level of behaviour and attainment through wearing the clothing.

On the other hand, clothing that is overly restrictive and uncomfortable may contribute to lack of attention to tasks and to frustration and even rebellion on the part of those being forced to wear it.

We tend to assume that logos are a modern invention but they date back to the so called ‘dark ages’ when the world was starting to industrialise and people were no longer totally self-sufficient. They needed to buy bread, beer, shoes and other daily items, but they couldn’t read, so when they got to town they would visit a market. Once markets began to give way to shops, the business would hang a symbol outside to show what was on sale inside. We use the same system today: a roof and walls means a building firm, while a glass with a foaming top is clearly indicating a place that sells alcohol.

How to decide what to include

A good designer will focus on your business but use some fresh ideas to give your logo a distinctive look. There are thousands of companies that incorporate a computer, keyboard or mouse in their designs to show they are related to the internet, but more imaginative uses are also possible – a computer repair company has a monitor on a stretcher as its logo and this picture is embroidered on polo-shirts worn by their technicians.

Colour choice is vital – dark colours show seriousness and business-like behaviour, bright ones suggest fun and excitement. Red is for danger, blue is masculine, pink feminine and grey and navy blue are ‘classic’. Picking the right colour is vital, especially for your workplace uniform.

Think about colours that wear well, are easy to wash and don’t blend into the background when displayed on printed clothing – a navy logo isn’t much good on a navy T-shirt! Unless you have a huge budget, stick to simple colours. Choosing just two, with black counting as one colour, will keep your costs down.