Custom Clothing Success Story: New York’s Booty Call

Image source: A-gc.com

Sometimes, the best ideas are the weirdest ideas. You need to come up with something truly innovative and bizarre in order to get noticed in a world where everything has already been done before.  

For example, how about sticking your company logo on underwear?   That's exactly what the New York Health and Racquet Club did back in 2004. The business gave underwear with the words "Booty Call" printed on the back and sent the sexy 20-somethings out to mingle with unsuspecting New Yorkers. The team of advertisers took their cheeky idea (no pun intended) to Grand Central Station, bent over, and flashed their campaign slogans at anything with eyes.  

Image source: Neatorama.com

As you might expect, people whipped out cell phone cameras and snapped a few photos of the curvaceous advertisers, giving the gym a marketing boost in the mobile world. Those pics quickly made their rounds through the web and before long there was an absolute torrent of web traffic. New York Health and Racquet Club reported getting more than 800,000 hits on their website following the marketing campaign. Visitors were greeted with a promotional advertisement for a new buns-building workout.  

"It was fantastic," said J. Travis, brand manager for New York Health and Racquet Club. He added, "It would have cost us half a million dollars to get that kind of publicity."   No buts about it -- this marketing campaign took advantage of a clever idea and transformed a few articles of custom clothing into marketing gold. It had everything that you'd expect from a successful marketing campaign -- viral potential, enthusiastic audiences, unexpected delight, and (of course) a few shapely backsides to fuel the fire.  

Image source: Highsnobiety.com

I'm not saying that you should go out and hire a few models to run around town in underwear bearing your company logo -- I'm just showing you how incredibly successful customized clothing can be as long as it has the right direction. Overlook the shapely posteriors for a moment and focus on the guerrilla advertising aspect of the Booty Call stunt. Rather than giving advertisers logo-emblazoned undies, you could hire a flash mob to perform some sort of public stunt while wearing your logo on a hat or shirt. More than a few people would whip out cell phones to share pictures and footage of your flash mob in action.  

Getting custom clothing is the easy part -- the only pain in the butt is figuring out how to use it in some innovative way to refresh your marketing campaign and get customers excited about your brand. All you need are people who are causing a scene (in the good way, of course), a couple of articles of clothing with your company logo, and you'll be well on your way to drumming up support for your business.