T-Shirt = Text Shirt

When you’re in the business of making something as simple and vanilla as a t-shirt, you have to think of ways to set yourself apart from every other wannabe entrepreneur with a screen printing kit in their parent’s garage. We’ve seen glow in the dark and metallic paints, the all-over print, and even flashing lights for the new Transformers movie. Capitalizing on the fact that text messaging is rapidly rising in popularity and has proven itself as an effective tool for feedback (i.e., voting on shows such as American Idol) and audience participation, Reactee has a line of t-shirts that invoke a user response. The customized t-shirts can be designed on their site and has instructions below your logo. When a passerby sends a text message with their mobile phone to the designated number, a response that you wrote will return. Though there is opportunity for some pretty immature results, imagine how powerful a tool this might be when applied correctly — for example, a band’s street team members might wear it at a concert and when you text the number, you get a response with the band’s set list or tour dates. Admittedly gimmicky, I think something like this could be very effective.