Rainbow coloured flags? A massive parade? More Lady Gaga tunes than you could shake a stick at?! Yes that’s right, this bank holiday weekend saw Manchester Pride descend on the city centre. The annual event aims to promote gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights and equality. While I happened to be wondering around the city centre and enjoying the parade, I was reminded by an order that we had here at clothes2order.com that I thought might be of interest to you all. The order came from the London Frontrunners.

The Frontrunners is a running club for gay men, lesbians and gay friendly people who love running. For the seventh year in a row they were organising ‘Pride Run 2010′ down in London. The aim of the run is to bring straight and gay/lesbian people together through sport as well as to raise money for various charities. Having just started with 200 runners taking part, the event now boasts over 1000 competitors with more than £23,000 having being raised for charity to date.

The Frontrunners were looking for their design to be printed on T-shirts, so after a Google search they found clothes2order. Impressed by the price and variety of products they placed an order and got a product that they were happy with. A big congratulations to all that took part in the event, especially to the London Frontrunner who managed the 10km course in 35 minutes 51 seconds (far too quick for my liking!).

Thank you to Martin for answering all my questions, we hope to hear from you and the London Frontrunners again soon!

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The most recent example of ambush marketing was insanely successful in getting attention, although the cost may turn out to be too high.

Three dozen pretty women wearing bright orange mini-dresses stole the show during the World Cup. Every camera, including the TV ones, was focused on them, right up until the moment that they were kicked out of the stadium. They’d been hired by a brewery (Bavaria) to promote the company during the football match. Now two of the women and the brewery are facing charges “organising unlawful commercial activities”. And it wasn’t just the pretty women, Robbie Earle was in the stadium as an ambassador for England’s 2018 World Cup bid but he was dropped as a TV commentator and ambassador because the orange lovelies got into the match using tickets he was given for distribution to his family and friends.

Why all the fuss? Because Budweiser paid millions to have exclusive beer representation during the competition.

Sponsorship is big business and ambush marketing tries to achieve the same level of coverage for almost no expenditure. The little orange dresses had only a tiny brand marker, but every Dutch person had already seen the exact same dress being worn by the wife of Rafeal van der Vaart – one of Holland’s best players.

And it’s a dirty business – Linford Christie once wore contact lenses with a cut-out of a puma on them to a press conference, because his status as an Olympian forbade him promoting his sportswear sponsor at Olympic events. And Michael Jordan actually covered up his Reeboks vest when Nike sponsored not the US basketball team, but just the team’s news conferences!

So if you can get away with using some kind of promotional clothing to launch an ambush marketing caper around a sporting event, you might decide it’s worth a try, but don’t mix it with the Olympics! The Olympic committee are notorious for aggressively defending their logo and even words associated with the Olympics, and fines for breaking their rules are substantial – up to £20,000 for each offence.

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Sports broadcasters often say that a player has been ‘capped’ for England (or any other country) a certain number of times, but most of us don’t even know what it means and why it’s said.

Back in history, uniforms for sporting events were reserved for select activities such as polo or cricket (or hunting, when that was allowed) because being able to invest in a distinctive uniform was evidence that you were a gentleman and therefore fit to take part. Popular sports such as football were played by working men who had no money for kit and so they would take to the field in any old clothes, but they would wear a cap if they were playing for one team, and be bare-headed if playing for the other. In 1872, a national football match between England and Scotland shows the Scots wearing something like a balaclava while the English wore a range of caps, mostly those that had been summer uniform at the players’ public schools! So ‘being capped’ was being chosen for a team and the term has come to denote a national honour.

Caps are an incredibly popular promotional item because they protect from both sun and rain and are natural advertising objects – if you overprint or embroider a cap, the legend it bears can be seen by everybody who encounters the individual wearing it. Even if he or she turns it round, like a skateboarder, the image is clearly visible to everybody behind him or her! This means that if you have a publicity campaign, a product that you want to promote or a new service to tell the world about, investing in promotional caps can bring you a fantastic return over a long time frame.

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What Is Transfer Printing?

Transfer printing allows the conversion of a high resolution image – maybe a photograph, line-art or painting – onto transfer paper. Unlike home transfer printing, the commercial quality transfer paper creates a much more detailed image of higher quality. While images can be printed form a wide range of formats such BMP, Tif Gif and Jpeg, the final result is more dependant on the quality of the original image than on anything else which means that the quality of the original is essential to getting a good garment result.  Using a commercial heat press and silicone release paper, the image is then transferred to a garment.

What Are Its Advantages?

Transfer printing is both fast and low in price.
It’s a good way of getting hold of small numbers of printed garments like T-shirts
There is no limit to the number of print colours.

What Can It Be Used For?

Transfer printing is ideal if you have a school competition for which you want T-shirts – schools have used this service to create portrait T-shirts for debating clubs or for inter-house competitions or to commemorate a sporting success by having a team photo printed rapidly onto a small quantity of celebratory long-sleeved T-shirts to give to the team players.

It’s also ideal for printing short run items for workplace promotions. Several companies have an ‘employee of the month’ campaign which includes items like printed aprons or other items of work clothing, which are given to the winning team.

The Drawbacks To Transfer Printing

Transfer printing can only take place onto white fabric.

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A year ago today it was announced that from the beginning of the month, Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group had became a sponsor of the Brawn GP Formula 1 racing team.  The newly sponsored car, driven by Jenson Button, has been one of the biggest promotional successes in the past 12 months for Virgin, and Jenson Button’s been pretty happy about the past year too!

So how can a smaller business make promotion work for them?

Begin by planning at least six months in advance. If your business is seasonal, aim your big promotional push for a period at least 3 months ahead of your busy time – if you sell wedding cakes, doing all your promotional work in June is daft, as that’s when most brides are getting married – you need them to be thinking about you in January! Also, suppliers of promotional items such as overprinted bags will be able to offer you a better deal the longer ahead you organise your promotional supplies.

Think about sport as a promotional vehicle

Sports promotion has two big advantages: publicity and public relations – supporting local athletes is always good publicity and it’s good public relations for the sponsor.

Pick a local club such as a hockey team or a junior football league and ensure your name is on the sporting equipment such as kit and casual clothing worn for warm-ups.

Make sure you do all the public relations work you can – it’s not enough to have your logo on team clothing, you also need to organise things like visits by the team to your workplace, days out for local children who have special needs to meet the players and try out the sport in question etc. All this builds a strong brand association between you and the team and public service.

Use sporting success to support your business

If your team wins, get your staff into some printed celebration T-shirts marking the victory, it’s a talking point with customers and gives your staff a real motivational boost to be supporting a winning team.

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The England team have revealed their new 2010 World Cup strip, which is based on the 1966 World Cup winning shirt. It’s a red jersey with the standard Three Lions logo which has above it a raised red embroidered star, to celebrate England’s one World Cup victory.

Using embroidery in this way is a classic style that adds intricacy without making a garment look too fussy. Standard uses for embroidery include:

Promotional wear – like the England strip described above. Because embroidery has a long pedigree, it carries echoes of tradition and ceremony. But as contemporary embroidery is designed and carried out using computer technology, there is no limit to the size, shape and colour of the text that can be sewn to a garment and still be legible.

Brand images – company logos  and monograms are commonly used on work clothing – where a personalised uniform may carry the staff member’s name as well as the company logo.

Monogramming – famously, young women embroidered their initials on sheets and pillowcases in their ‘hope’ chests and then, when they found a husband, rushed to add his initials to their monogram before the wedding. Today monogramming is seen on everything from plush towels in a spa through to the pockets of the smart shirts worn by City traders.

Embroidery is one of the most durable ways to decorate clothing, as well as being one of the most impressive looking, which is probably why the England designers have chosen to embroider the single red star, for the 1966 win, so elegantly over the England symbol on the football shirts they hope will be worn in another victorious final.

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2012 means Summer Olympics, for the UK at least.  Sports clothing retailer JJB is relying on the Olympic boost to pull it out of a slump, in part by appointing four times Olympic Gold winner Sir Matthew Pinsent as anNon-executive director.

But all businesses, not just sports retailers, can benefit from the ‘Olympic effect’.  Choosing to invest in the buzz that comes from the Olympics is a good way of building teams and creating new energy in your business. There are two ways of doing this:

1 – picking champions

You may already have sports-people in your organisation – at a much lower level than the Olympic standard. But investing in them and setting up support systems can encourage all your staff to see that you believe in their talents and personal development. Companies can do this by:

1.    Sponsoring a local event like a fun run, or a youth football team, or offering to pay for branded sports clothing for an amateur sports team, whether they are darts players or netballers.
2.    Getting staff involved in supporting a local football or other team by organising visits to watch matches and investing in promotional clothing that says ‘X business is supporting Y team’ which can be worn in the workplace.
3.    Funding a skills development day for local sports people – bringing in a trainer to help sporty types to improve their performance and setting up a stall about your business and what it has to offer alongside the sports work.

2 – making champions

Getting an entire business involved in healthy activity can sound impossible, but if you make active life part of the personal development of all your staff, it bring rewards because they take less time off, have more energy and a great team spirit. Companies can do this by:

1.    Picking a range of sports: swimming, running and a ball sport are the best options, and offering staff a range of ways of engaging with them.     Some companies offer an extra half hour lunchbreak once a week for people who go to the local pool and swim during that time.  Others set up after work ball games and provide printed T-shirts and sporting equipment for staff to take to the local park.
4.    Some businesses sponsor a charity and get all employees involved in a fun run or sponsored walk with special motivational branded clothing that links the business to the good cause and creates recognition in the public of the way the company is supporting the local community.

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Starting in San Francisco, but taking the world by (quiet) storm at present, what Americans call workwear is the big fashion story at present. The kind of clothing that was worn by cowboys and farmers, factory hands and forestry workers has become a huge fashion statement.

It seems that fashion responds to our primal urges and what most people want now is a job, or at least to look as if they’ve got one, and that means that the basic uniform of the manual worker or tradesman has become one of the most popular fashion looks around.

What’s hot

If your staff wear high-vis clothing, then green is the new black, the bright lime-green used in High Visibility vests was all over the catwalks at the beginning of the year, but glowing orange was nowhere to be seen.

Caterpillar and other work boots, worn with thick cushioned work socks turned down over the top of the boot cuff, were also much in evidence.

The old blue-collar of blue collar workers is trending as a huge hit. Work shirts in shades of blue are outselling other colours three to one in Japan! Worn with the sleeves rolled up, these durable work shirts are not in factories but in the bars and clubs frequented by Japan’s students.

What’s not

Anything too light or lightweight has been ruled out – chunky sweatshirts and heavy boiler suits are in, as are thick work trousers with cargo pockets but right out are thin cotton trousers, slip on shoes and skinny jackets.

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Clothing carries a lot of social symbology – the hoodie, reviled as the clothing choice of anti-social youth, is also the garment of choice for the boxing fraternity, in fact it’s hard to find a picture of Amir Khan clothed, where he’s wearing anything else!

T-shirts are seen as the casual clothing chosen by those who are relaxed and out to have a good time, which is why Durham City Council has chosen them as a reward for good behaviour over Christmas.  When drinkers in city pubs by food or a non-alcoholic drink, they are being offered a black T-shirt with an image that resembles a rock band logo, saying Best Bar None, and the hope is that it will cut alcohol related crime by reducing binge drinking. Carol Feenan, Durham County Council Best Bar None Manager, said, ‘The free T-shirts are proving extremely popular amongst both customers and staff alike.’

So if clothing carries such strong images, what does your company’s uniform say about you? Would a new style polo-shirt improve your image of efficiency and calm, or perhaps smarter shirts with an embroidered monogram would help create the air of upmarket service that you wish to convey? Maybe your casual friendly attitude would be better conveyed by a slimline fleece than your current bulky jackets? Choosing uniforms that convey the right social symbology can really help your business generate the right impression.

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The California-based Hoelzer Reich apparel company has been banned from sponsoring fighters at future UFC and WEC (cage and martial arts fights) events in the UK. Concerns were raised over the company’s “German-themed” apparel worn by fighters as they entered the ring – the symbols used on a shirt worn by a boxer at the weekend appeared to resemble the Iron Cross and a logo closely resembling the SS emblem.

One problem is that such symbology is obviously offensive to many people and using it unintentionally on corporate clothing, or as part of a uniform, could mean a disastrous PR result.

Another problem is that designers, especially young ones, tend to like to work with edgy, provocative material, while businesses trying to build respect and loyalty want solid, respectful symbolism – a lightning flash on a polo-shirt collar might look like it represents speed to the designer, but to the general public it can look very much like a Nazi SS reference.

This is why it’s important, when designing corporate clothing, promotional T-shirts or uniforms, to do some product testing with the workforce and with the public. This can also be a great way to get good publicity – select a short list of designs and ask your customers to vote on which polo-shirt they think your staff would look best in, or offer them a range of T-shirt designs to pick from and give the person who manages to put them in the same preference order as your CEO a prize. While the publicity is good, what’s even better is that you don’t make any mistakes about logos or symbols that then come back to bite you.

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