I Want My LTV Shirt!

I received my custom-printed “LTV RULES!” t-shirts yesterday. Naturally, you buy these over the Internet. The customer experience was painless at www.designashirt.com and I’d highly recommend them.

What’s interesting from a Client X Client point of view is that the company offered a $.50 discount on each shirt if you add their logo. Maybe I shouldn’t be too impressed at their cleverness in recognizing that the product represented an advertising opportunity, since many of their shirts are used as marketing promotions to begin with. Still, it’s a classic example of identifying a “slot” (space on a shirt you printed). converting it into a customer experience (if your logo were not on the shirt, no one would not know you produced it), and attaching a value to it (paying the buyer $.50 per shirt).

How did they come up with $.50? I don’t know and rather doubt it’s based on very precise analysis—after all, it’s tough to measure response to such a promotion. Could they sell the space to someone else, perhaps for more money? Quite likely: many marketers would welcome the opportunity to reach such highly targeted audiences, and many of the shirt buyers would gladly trade a price reduction for adding a logo or two. If the match were made correctly, there could be a mutual halo effect between the organization and the advertiser.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to enjoying my shirts, and will definitely send one to the colleague I mentioned yesterday who didn’t want to run his company by LTV.