one million free t-shirts idea

Admin · Mar 29, 2008

http://www.onemillionfreetshirts.com/index.html

A free t-shirt covered with ads for who knows what..well actually nothing right now

Edwin · Mar 29, 2008

At a minimum of $30,000 per sponsor, and given that the t-shirts won't happen until all the spaces are full, the spaces are probably going to stay empty. Especially since they're only producing the T-shirts in size "medium" and making them available to US residents.

A cooler idea would be to have a site that gives away t-shirts with company logos on them where the company pays for the t-shirts, shipping and a bit to cover the site's costs. That way e.g. Ford or Coca-Cola could "seed" 1000 random people around the world with shirts carrying what is in essence their ad. Each company would be exclusive to one "batch" of t-shirts, where the batch size could be 1,000, 2,000 and so on. Doesn't exist, but it probably has a better chance than the million t-shirt idea...

Admin · Mar 29, 2008

Good analysis Edwin, but wouldn't a big company just spend the money printing the Ts themselves and giving them away on their own site?

I'm not sure what the site adds to the idea.

Edwin · Mar 29, 2008

Not in my version. The site itself would become well-known as the place to get free t-shirts, and so companies wouldn't have to commit resources/cash to spreading the idea of free t-shirts, only to paying for the shirts themselves. There could even be an element of geographical targeting I suppose - or size/gender targeting - e.g. a company says "We want to pay for 1,000 shirts size L or larger, sent to people in Spain".

It's the chicken-and-egg of kickstarting the idea that's the hardest, but after that it's marrying companies wanting to do a bit of viral, offline advertising with people willing to become "walking billboards" for their products or services.