T shirts - Brand immortality?
Michael Pollock
T-shirts are the lazy man's scrapbook.
That must be the reason they're so hard to throw out. Go into your
bedroom, open your drawer and be honest with yourself: How many of
those tees are you really going to wear again? How many will you
really fit into again?
And yet, when your roommate, spouse or mom asks: "When are you finally
going to get rid of that ridiculous mound of shirts?" The answer is
usually: "This weekend!"
The reality is: "When I'm dead! (And could you please bury me in the
Stones' Steel Wheels Tour shirt from 1990?)"
Humble, trite and tacky though they may be, T-shirts remain one of the
longest-lived promos you could ever throw at a customer. Long after
the free pen has exploded and the free Frisbee has been chewed
(hopefully not by you), the T-shirt remains a garment -- something we
humans seem hard-wired not to throw out. And we never seem to get
enough of them, either.
"Everyone is looking for T-shirts," says publicist David Schemelia,
himself the owner of a box of save-forever faves crammed into his
crawl space.
"I really am uncertain why I love T-shirts so much," admitted Jason
Tirotta, a communications guy at Case Western Reserve. "I think of
myself as very fashion-conscious. But after work or on the weekends, I
just love to throw on a tee."
Part of the reason is simple comfort, of course, and part of the
reason is economy: Shirts just seem to materialize, like mildew. They
come free with registration for the race, the dance, the school, the
reunion, the conference. Or maybe -- let's say for the sake of
argument -- you actually buy one.
Either way, the shirt ends up helping you remember a trip or a triumph
-- something. And it is that connection to a particular time, place
and event that makes it so powerful.
"It's like a trophy," said Gail Sideman, a publicist who counts a
"gazillion" shirts in her collection. Shirts remind you of who you've
been. They show the world who you are. But that doesn't mean they have
to be devoid of marketing messages.
"I attended a wing festival in Buffalo with my 14-year-old son and he
was given a 'Too Hot To Handle' T-shirt for eating the spiciest wings
offered by one vendor," said Drew Neisser, CEO of Renegade Marketing.
"The T-shirt was made of cheap cotton and had a big logo of the pizza
joint with their address. He wears it all the time."
Sure. He's proud! "Each T-shirt represents a period of your life or a
different experience," says Megan Nicolay, author of "Generation T:
108 Ways to Transform a T-shirt." Her book shows how to turn old T-
shirts into leg-warmers, quilts, even a wedding dress. It's in its
eighth printing because here, at last, is a way to scrapbook without
actually, uh, scrapbooking.
"One of the designs is a 'Road Trip Skirt,'" says Nicolay. "You take
all these tees you gathered during a road trip and sew them together
in vertical panels, so the next time you go out you can say, 'This is
from when I went to California, this is from that crazy weekend in New
York City ..."
A T-shirt starts conversations -- that has always been one of its
biggest jobs -- and the more comments it elicits, the more it gets
worn. Nicolay's favorite shirt just says "Magic" on the front and "13"
on the back. "It's obviously a sports team's jersey made with iron-on
letters, but I've been walking down the street, and people will start
singing, 'Do You Believe in Magic?' or 'Black Magic Woman.'"
Make a brilliant T-shirt for your brand, and you will have a walking
billboard for life.
And possibly a billboard in the afterlife, too.