There are three key concerns when selecting promotional clothing

• Budget
• Appearance
• Performance

Budget is simple and is usually the tightest and most evident constraint on promotional clothing. There will usually be a limit on what can be spent, and within that limit the clothing has to be effective and attractive.

Appearance can be shaped by material – cheap T-shirts do not last long, but if you are promoting a short-term event such as a weekend sale or a festival, they may be all that is required. More substantial materials will give a longer life to the garment and a more solid appearance to the clothing which reflects on the brand the promotional clothing supports. Bear in mind the climate and population in your chosen area: if there are many older residents, you are more likely to succeed with polo-shirts than T-shirts, but if there’s a large student population, jogging pants and T-shirts will be much more popular than classic clothing items.

Performance is part of the process of applying promotional clothing to the world. If you choose embroidered baseball caps, they will get much more wear in summer than winter, while knit hats will be more popular in winter than summer. Barbecue aprons are summer clothing but gloves and scarves perform best for their brand in winter. Making a wise selection gets your message out their for the maximum period of time, but other businesses will know this too, so don’t disregard the competition when planning your promotional clothing: your garments have to be attractive to get worn as well as season-appropriate.

Geeklist has had an interesting couple of weeks. It all started with them launching a promotional video showing a pretty woman dancing around in a Geeklist T-shirt and underclothes. Somewhat to their surprise it didn’t go down too well with the many women in the tech industries who used the social media that Geeklist features on to complain.

Then something odd happened. The Geeklist team became defensive and started attacking the people who were tweeting about the T-shirt wearing video, telling them their tone was inappropriate and they should ‘take it offline’.

Finally they saw sense, but not until a darkly brilliant bug report made the rounds of their industry, playing a mind-game with the situation that has become a meme in how not to promote your brand.

So what went wrong?

1. Failure to engage with the client base – not least in that a woman is likely to have pointed out the alternative interpretations of their video (if they’d consulted one)
2. Failure to engage with T-shirt designer – most T-shirt companies, designers and printers have a clear idea how to steer clear of controversy, and a good sense of how close to go to that edge, because they’ve worked with many clients trying to promote themselves (seems Geeklist didn’t consult their designer/printer about their intentions either)
3. Failure to respond to the problem sensibly – when they were challenged on Twitter, Geeklist went after the challengers – failing to notice that in one case, it was a major client who had raised concerns and inflaming the situation even further by being rude to somebody who’s paying their wages …

While they will probably survive this, Geeklist have provided a perfect example of how a simple, low-budget promotional gimmick can blow up in your face if you don’t think it through and get some expert advice!

As British football fans focus on the recovery of Fabrice Muamba after a collapse on the football pitch, supportive T-shirts abound. Meantime, in New Jersey, America, a new T-shirt raises awareness of brain injury – its causes, its treatment and the need to raise funds for people with such injuries. The limited edition shirt is on sale for a month only.

Footballers are lifting their team shirts to show messages of support for Fabrice Muamba and his family, and the awareness of the risks of cardiac arrest and the value of knowing CPR and being able to do it on somebody whose heart has stopped.

Such awareness raising activities can be a valuable support to community activities – also being promoted this week is a walk for a hospice, linked to Davina McCall’s personal trainer whose relatives benefited from the hospice’s existence and TOWIE star Amy Childs wearing a Sport Relief T-shirt.

Of course not every business can find a celebrity to endorse them, but just about every business can find a good cause that needs public awareness and offer to sponsor a T-shirt or polo shirt that will help raise the profile of the cause. It can be extremely cheap, and by linking a subtle brand element such as a logo, to the awareness raising T-shirt, companies can create a long term association between themselves and a popular and worthy cause which benefits both parties.

Linking such T-shirts to an event can be even more positive: a marathon team, a group undertaking a world record, a flash mob or just giving out information leaflets about the cause in the street all bring a new recognition of the cause, and of the company that is supporting it through branded clothing.

A nuts and bolts article by Forbes shows how clothing brand Mishka has linked its garments to music to create a compelling blend for consumers, but what can non-clothing brands do to distinguish themselves from the competition?

Mishka has developed a relationship with hip-hop groups that has fed a loyalty factor into its garment sales. When groups like BBU are endorsed by DJs like Diplo, the spin-off for the clothing company that supports the group is a group of fans that wear Mishka clothing to show their fandom for Diplo, or BBU or several other bands.

The average business may not feel equipped or even keen, to get into the world of music promotion, but every founder has some kind of outside interest. For Mishka’s Mikhail Bortnik it was skate graphics and band T-shirts. For a car dealership owner it may be classic cars, the proprietor of a white goods store may love bowling, or the wife of the founder of a software company may be committed to growing vegetables. Whatever the passion, there are ways to promote relationships in the community through clothing, sponsorship and genuine grass roots enthusiasm.

Mishka was one of the first clothing retailers to have a blog ‘The Bloglin’ which launched in 2007 and became a check in point for fashion fans and music fans alike.

Bowling tournament schedules can be posted online with reviews of previous games, tips and hints about what to grow now and what to cook with what’s seasonally available can be treated similarly. Recipe lists given away with white goods – bowling bags or vegetable bags or baseball caps printed with the company logo for anybody doing anything outdoors, sponsored bowls or weed clearances for a local charity … the ideas are limited only by the ingenuity of those involved, and it’s much easier to promote a good cause than a company, any day. Getting staff involved is just as easy. You can set up a bowling team or a workplace vegetable bed, offer a prize for the best score or the biggest potato, and then put out regular press releases about the company’s charitable activities, supported by photos of the team wearing branded clothing.

Most companies know that they have to respect the trademarks, specifically the symbols, of other companies and organisations. But even large organisations sometimes fall foul of the law, whether absent-mindedly or in full cognisance of their actions.

A legal case currently being heard in the U.S. District Court of New Mexico is alleging both trademark violations infringements of the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act. This act legislates the sale of Indian arts and crafts and covers fake artworks and claims that falsely suggest products are of American Indian manufacture or provenance. The Navajo tribe has around a dozen registered trademarks the cover use of the Navajo and Navajo Nation names on clothing, footwear, textiles and household products both in shops and as online retail sales. The lawsuit points out that “The fame or reputation of the Navajo name and marks is such that, when [somebody uses similar marks] with its goods and services, a connection with the Navajo Nation is falsely presumed.”

Urban Outfitters had already weathered a storm in 2011 when it produced underwear and a hip flask that the Navajo Nation cited as being “derogatory and scandalous,” particularly in relation to alcohol which is banned from the Navajo (Dinee) Reservation.

The retailer has removed the products from its website after receiving of a cease-and-desist letter but items, particularly craft goods such as belts, bags, hats and boots are still being retailed through shops, according the lawyers for the Navajo Nation.

A spokesman for Urban Outfitters stated that “we interpret trends” and claims that the company will continue like “many other fashion brands” to explore the Native American inspired trend in T-shirts and other products.

When designing and choosing promotional clothing it’s tempting to call upon established themes and well-known or well-loved images to support a new brand or to call attention to a product, but it’s important to ensure that infringements of trademarks do not lead to negative publicity.

Chris Matyszczyk over at CNet News has a thought-provoking post about branded clothing as worn by people in start-up industries, which covers a lot of territory in a very pithy fashion.

Two things really stood out for me:

1 – his point that if you wear your brand so obviously on your clothing, it deprives others of a natural way to get into business conversation with you: if your company is emblazoned on your front, the chance to explain, explore, persuade and downright charm others into seeing your company the way you do is gone, they know your company name and probably form a judgement about it, and you, without ever needing to speak to you. That’s a wasted opportunity because maybe, just maybe, you have a solution for them that isn’t evident until you get conversation.

2 – brands come and go, and some brands today are utterly contemptible – would anybody wear a ‘Ratner’s’ T-shirt these days, or wander around a business convention with ‘I bank with Barings’ on their sweatshirt and expect to get any kind of response other than disbelief and scorn? So sometimes it’s important to think about what you’re saying and how it may be remembered.

We’ve all become used to seeing racing drivers and Grand Prix motorcyclists, and their vehicles, emblazoned with sponsorship decals and promotional symbols, but now Honda’s MotoGP team is benefitting from a new technology created in partnership with the Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP) which combines promotional clothing with sensors that collect and transmit data over a wireless network.

The T-shirts are able to conduct a real-time monitoring of the rider, creating an intelligent garment that is non-invasive and allows sports professionals to analyse the overall performance of an athlete by, for example, assessing if body temperature or dehydration are contributing to a slowing of response time, or whether physical effort during a race is leading to a build up of lactic acid in the rider’s body which can slow recovery time.

The clothing could also combine promotional activity with data gathering – it is possible, for example, for embedded LEDs in a garment to flash in unison with a rider’s heartbeat, which could lead to an interaction between clothing and race commentators who would be able to interpret the rider’s emotional responses via the rate at which symbols on clothing flashed or changed colour.

The clothing will be road-tested during the Qatar Grand Prix in April.

As President Obama fired a marshmallow cannon in the White House dining room in a publicity stunt that resonated around the world, a range of promotional clothing to fund the incumbent’s Presidential re-election campaign went on sale. It’s a bewildering concept for the British voter: while some people put up posters in their windows, or may put a sticker in their car, almost nobody would wear a campaign T-shirt, unless it was a satirical comment on the election process as a whole. In America though, dressing the part demonstrates commitment to a candidate and to their funding, which is strictly regulated by the Federal Electoral Commission. Beyonce Knowles has designed a T-shirt for the campaign, and a silk scarf created by Monique Pean bears the President’s portrait.

The drive to sell is being fuelled by deliberately low prices which allow people to get a designer label (tops by Marc Jacobs, or a bag by Diane von Furstenburg) at much lower than usual prices. The opposition have raised questions about the issue, suggesting that while the designers may have donated their time for free, anybody who would normally be paid to help produce printed clothing would be ‘underwriting’ the campaign, which is illegal, but the Obama team say they are confident that all the technical support given to and by the designers was voluntary and unpaid.

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.

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.