The Hottest T-Shirt Trends for 2012 : Promotional T-Shirts and Apparel

By Colleen McKenna

Give a Tee, Get a Lead

Sims offered an example of a promotion Heritage Sportswear Inc. and Gildan co-sponsored at The PPAI Expo in January, where they gave away T-shirts, gas cards and a three-year car lease. “We packed a Chevy Cruze with tees and attendees registered guesses on how many tees were stuffed in the car at our booth,” said Sims. To get the three-year car lease, attendees had to correctly guess the number of T-shirts in a Chevy Cruze parked in the convention center lobby. “More than 800 attendees placed guesses; it was a good way to get traffic to the booth,” she added.

Sims further explained the decision to create and give away the T-shirts. “We selected three of Gildan’s new colors for imprinting and went with basic screen printing as the decoration. We limited our imprint to two colors—white and black—and our imprint was designed to get people to ask the question, ‘What does the 98 stand for on your tee?’” said Sims. The imprint read “Choose how you CRUZE” with a 98. “[The 98] represents the number of colors Gildan offers in 2012.” Even if distributors did not win the car, they had the chance of winning a gas card to fuel their current vehicle. “To further the promo, if attendees wore their free shirt at the show, they could win a $25.00 gas card,” said Sims. The promotion was successful because the information about Gildan’s expanded color wheel reached over 800 distributors.

The United States is in the midst of economy-spurred protests, what is projected to be the most negative U.S. presidential campaign in history and somewhat founded (but largely hyperbolic) claims of impending apocalypse. In unsettling or at least new-frontier times like these, it's nice to look to classic, unchanged parts of society. For promotional wears, that means the T-shirt. Suppliers have not revamped the look of T-shirts or drastically changed their styles. Rather, they have built on the classic style and worked to improve the comfort and imprint-holding abilities of tees so they can remain the perennial favorite of promotional apparel, and possibly hold slogans and logos for the many more protests, elections and apocalyptic messages to come.

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