I strongly believe that the best growth vehicle for this industry would be to have similar standards of research as those two media have. I have argued in P&P before that printwear should see itself as part of the media world rather than part of the clothing industry, in the same way that this magazine is part of that media world, rather than the printing industry.

When you are selling to marketing managers, you should recognise their motivations. First, they want to grow their brands; they've got targets to achieve and expect every penny spent to contribute to that end; they've got demanding bosses who are interested in results not how funky or stylish the brand's printwear is; they want to justify a budget (and salary) increase; they want to get promoted; they want to keep their jobs. Your proposition has to tick as many of those boxes as possible and I don't believe that printwear currently has the necessary firepower.

Marketing managers are used to having solid figures put before them. Managers of big established brands can predict with surprising accuracy how many more sales they'll achieve for a given budget spent on, say, TV or press. If you then go to them and say "put that message on printwear", they want to know what the outcome will be. Where, they will ask, is your collateral evidence for success from this expenditure? And you haven't got any.

Sure, marketing departments aren't just full of number crunchers and will follow their personal beliefs rather than just what the calculator is telling them. But that's risky and people aiming to keep and improve a £40,000 salary tend to be risk-averse. Don't expect their agencies to be more positive, either. Their motivations are similar, with ‘keeping the client' top of the pile and ‘keeping them happy' second. Agencies, therefore, feel confident making recommendations that are evidence-based and are twitchy about "here's a great idea... in my opinion".

Un-quantified evidence

Meanwhile, there's a stack of un-quantified evidence of the power of printwear. You have but to walk down a high street or go to a pub on Saturday night and there it is: marketing messages on human billboards abound. In fact, a high proportion of promotional messages that people are receiving on that high street, in that pub are coming via printwear - and everybody knows it. The trouble is, they don't know which messages, how many recipients or how often. They don't even know what makes an individual to choose to wear a particular piece of printwear and reject another.

This smacks of missed opportunity. Let's take a case. Young men aged 18-25 are notoriously difficult to reach via mainstream media, even with the success of Nuts, Loaded and so on. But they definitely do like printwear. If you could prove how many of them liked it, how often they wore it and what brands they remembered seeing on it, imagine how much easier it would be to sell to breweries, mobile phone companies and car manufacturers, to name but three major sectors.

So what would fill the gap, who does it and what would it cost?

This magazine, and every other good one, has ABC figures - audience research completed by Audit Bureau of Circulations. Broadcast media has BARB. In essence they share the costs of this research. Why should the printwear industry not have its equivalent? If you're thinking the answer is cost, see below, because it's not.

For the following information I am indebted to Graeme Griffiths of TNS Media, part of TNS, a global market information and insight group - for those with grey hair they used to be called Taylor Nelson Sofres - and, being in the UK top three, they are seriously heavy hitters in the market research industry.

Our survey says....

Acccording to Griffiths, the first task is to estimate the audience size. This, incidentally, is a quick, easy and cheap option to give potential customers a sense of the size of the market. It would answer those basic questions: who's wearing what and how often? Gut feel says the answer is going to be mainly under-30-year-olds. But is that still the case? Is there a gender bias? Is there a social bias? Is there an age ceiling?

The simple solution to this is to use a regular Omnibus survey. These are operated by all the major players in the research world and, as the name suggests, cover a vast array of topics. A handful of questions would cost just a few thousand pounds and boy would that give the industry a valuable starting point.

The next step up in the process is to ask the question: Who notices logos and other messages on printwear? Again this can be addressed through an Omnibus survey, establishing people's views, likes and dislikes of printwear as well as messages they may have noted.

There comes a point, however, where omnibus studies cease to be cost effective, because you are essentially paying by the question - either you leave questions unasked or the cost is unpalatable. Therefore a standalone research project becomes appropriate with costs in the region of £10,000 to £30,000, depending on scope.

The aspect of noticing printwear messages becomes more important when you move to the level of measuring effectiveness. Certainly, this is more complex, but it is still feasible. It is also where the more valuable sales tools lie. Being able to demonstrate that you are indeed creating human billboards and showing how many people take on board the messages would open a lot of doors. It might be naïve to suggest that you could draw a direct correlation between seeing a T-shirt and buying a product, although in certain closely defined areas, such as student pubs during Freshers week, that too could be possible. You can certainly look at the brand perceptions of both wearer and viewer.

Equally important, you could demonstrate that people who wear particular brands/logos are "brand advocates" and these people are extremely valuable. They are obviously happy to be a human billboard so it would be beneficial to establish how they feel about that and how that brand loyalty manifests itself in other areas

TNS has a product called FutureView, which is designed to segment a market and highlight the true leaders and future shapers who people listen to. It is instantly obvious how valuable it could be to have not just a walking billboard but one which buys the product and recommends it to friends.

Having a solid set of research statistics is more than just a valuable sales tool. It would raise the profile of printwear in marketing departments and agencies. The creative directors and art directors who currently wouldn't be seen dead designing a t-shirt would come to recognise its potential significance. When the creatives get as excited about printwear as they do media, results can truly flow.                                                 

Paul Clapham is a marketing consultant with over 25 years' experience covering a broad range of business sectors and a full spread of marketing disciplines. He runs his own business, working with small, medium and large companies alike to increase their profitability through marketing. Tel:01453 765432

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