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.

Selling Barack Obama memorabilia has been a lucrative business and he’s not even President yet!  Everyone from souvenir sellers to student activists and from national newspapers to the American ‘souvenir empire’ the Franklin Mint has made much money from images of America’s next president.

‘We found that merchandising efforts during the campaign were successful, that people were so enthusiastic and they wanted to have a little piece of history,’ said Linda Douglass, speaking for the Obama inaugural committee which is organising promotional products from T-shirts to mouse mats to bumper stickers to sell in the run up to the inauguration.

In Brazil, many businesses take part in the Warm Winter Campaign, which gets employees to give blankets, hats, scarves and jackets which are then donated to the needy.  Each company usually creates its own posters to remind staff that the Campaign is running. But this year a Brazilian TV network called SBT took a different route. It commissioned promotional clothing such as hats, scarves and sweatshirts with the campaign message printed right onto the clothing. Then it put the items around the company HQ, hanging scarves on coatstands and pinning sweatshirts up in the cafeteria, with a label underneath saying ‘This advertisement will be donated to the 2008 Warm Winter Campaign. Support it too’. People going outside the company were encouraged to wear the hats. Over 1,000 items of clothing were collected throughout the campaign’s duration and as the original promotional materials were donated too, the promotional budget actually contributed to the good cause, creating a great PR buzz that became international news, for no extra cost.

Barack Obama image courtesy of transplanted mountaineer at Flickr under a creative commons licence