T-Shirt Advertising With a Twist

admin    T-Shirt Marketing     T-Shirt Marketing, advertising, eyeearn, iwearyourshirt

UPDATE: http://buy-tees.net/2009/02/iwearyourshirt-com-dont-bother/

Now I don’t normally put the terms “genius” and “marketing” together in the same sentence, but if you’re after something a little different, no matter what your business, t-shirt related or not, here’s something out of the ordinary for you. Essentially Jason Sadler of Iwearyourshirt.com is renting out the upper-half of his body for the next year. You will be disappointed to find out that just about every day for next January (2009) has been sold out, and in a moment you’ll understand exactly why.

The beauty of Jason’s idea is simplicity, unlike the awful multi-level marketing scheme EyeEarn.com (I won’t even link to it :/) which seems to have a master plan of forcing the world to wear it’s grotty logo, yes everyone, the same shirt, (isn’t that more communist than capitalist?), Jason is prepared to do the modelling and marketing for you. read more

A T-Shirt Forum For A New Generation

admin    T-Shirt News     Design By Humans, T-Shirts, Threadless, advertising, cameesa, discuss, illustrator, photoshop, screen-printing, t-shirt design, t-shirt forum, talk, tee shirts, woot

As Liz from PopCultureTees.com – the creator of the brand new t-shirt forum TeeDesignTalk.com told me the other day – “one forum (no names mentioned :p) out there is definitely the big boy of the industry – but I’ve always considered them more of an industry forum than a designer forum. When I was working in the screen printing industry, they were my first stop for technical questions…. not so much for design questions. They are definitely grumpy! I think that with all the people who are participating in sites like emptees and threadless there’s a whole new set of people who are interested in t-shirts, but coming from an entirely different direction. They’re the people who are design cool stuff, not t-shirts for schools and churches.”

I couldn’t agree more with Liz and hopefully you are also in agreement, we need to step up the evolution in the world of t-shirts and reflect the massive developments in our industry, it’s true that since the emergence of sites like Threadless.com there has been a noticeable key change in the attitude and culture of both designers and consumers of the beloved tee. read more

Branded T-Shirts Suck

admin    T-Shirt Articles     advertising, brand identity, brand tees, branded t-shirts, brands, consumer rights, designer brands, history

I’ve said it before and will probably say countless times more before I’m done, don’t buy branded t-shirts, don’t advertise the company that has taken your rather than vice-versa. The whole of history is on my side, take “Back to The Future“, the moment where Micheal J. Fox‘s character “Marty McFly” has to clear up the confusion about his name.

“Marty McFly: Calvin? Wh… Why do you keep calling me Calvin?
Lorraine Baines: Well, that is your name, isn’t it? Calvin Klein? It’s written all over your underwear.”

Historically uniforms are for war, not entertainment, and rarely for the purposes of fashion. read more

Give up your individuality for a free t-shirt?

admin    T-Shirt News     MLM, SFI, T-Shirts, advertising, eye earn, marketing, tees

Give up your individuality for a free t-shirt? EyeEarn.com ripped off an idea I had years ago, in fact there are probably a few who thought of it before I did. Essentially the idea I had was called Punk Ads, it was at punkads.tv which has long since disappeared. The point is I was already one step ahead of the game way back then, the difference between my t-shirt ‘billboard’ idea and EyeEarn’s is the power of chance opportunities and the world media – if you can manage to “borrow it” for a while. I’ll explain my alternative process once I’ve got you clued up on EyeEarn and why their idea will never work.

First of all the site is “powered by” SFI international, an enormous affiliate system that I never wanted to pay to find out exactly what they do or sell, simply because I don’t pay any company to provide me an income, only a service. It’s something I learned a long long time ago, if you can buy say some information that had the potential to make others rich, then it maybe worth the price, but here’s the basic rule. If part or even all of your monthly fees contribute to yours or someone else’s back-pocket then it’s MLM (multi level marketing). Recruiting recruiters to earn yourself an income is a bad idea and it all comes down to probabilities.

The guy who starts a successful MLM company is guaranteed success, perhaps a few of his friends as well, the rest will be lucky if they ever make that money back. It’s just a matter of confidence rather than choice, as with franchises, you have to weigh up the outlay for the letterheads, stickers, equipment, leads, but at least you should have a real product to sell, even if you do end up paying over the odds for wholesale prices. Sometimes a name can help, McDonalds and most fast food companies offer franchises, I’m not condoning junk food, I’m only pointing out that you do get a lease on a real building full of equipment and staff, a high street or mall location, and of course an extremely famous logo to pull the punters in. For all that expect to pay tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands for an established city centre giant. read more