Steal this Travel Marketing Idea: Threadless Loves Travel

Welcome to this week’s installment of Steal This Travel Marketing Idea.  Today’s great concept?  Threadless Loves Travel.

Who’s Threadless?

If you haven’t heard of threadless, you should because it’s a business that really took the ‘long tail’ model to heart and transformed a very simple business into big profits: t-shirts!  They run all sorts of contest related to best t-shirt designs and have essentially built a massive community of folks in love with their brand and ethos.  And I have to say, if you’re looking for a cool t-shirt, look no further!

In case you were wondering what t-shirts have to do with travel marketing, this particular campaign focuses on designing t-shirt logos based on the love of travel.    So there’s still plenty for us to learn from.

What’s So Great about It?

Creative.  Even I, who have little in the way of design skills, felt inspired to put some of my own ideas out there, especially after seeing some of the other way-too-cool submissions.

Tangible Results they can re-use.  Some of those designs could be reused by threadless in other promotions, and of course it expands their portfolio of interesting t-shirts for people to buy.  So it isn’t a throw-away campaign in that sense.

Working with Partners.  This is huge – we wouldn’t even be talking about the thing if it weren’t for the fact that Threadless worked with some other suppliers to provide airfare (Icelandair), luggage (Dakine), music (Calexico), and other goodies.  Cross-promoting with partners has a lot of huge advantages and can expand the reach of a campaign beyond your own network.

Off-Topic.  Threadless is in the t-shirt business, but this is (for most intent) a travel-y campaign.  It brings their brand to the attention of a whole bunch of people who might not even know who they are.  Getting off-topic can sometimes be very good for business.  (That’s when the partners thing gets very important!)

What could be better?

A Range of Rewards.  There’s one big prize, but otherwise if you don’t win there isn’t anything else for runners-up (of course,  you could order your shirt that you designed, but you could have done that anyway).  I can’t help but think it would have been cool to do something a little more exciting, like give 100 of the best submissions a free t-shirt and give everyone who didn’t win a coupon discount for ordering and five coupons to give to their friends, good for that t-shirt only.   Your mom might have bought the t-shirt anyway, but isn’t the coupon more incentive to tell everyone else about it?

And a Heavy Dollop of Follow-Through. I hope the Icelandair crew wear the t-shirts on the flight the winner takes.    It took a lot of work to get those designs there, so take advantage of the results.

To Learn More

Want some inspiration for your own travel marketing campaigns?  Then check out our do-it-yourself guide, 33 Fun and Effective Ways to Promote Your Travel Business Online.  From the characteristics of a good campaign, to ideas and inspiration for your own plans as well as a helpful planning worksheet, it’s all you need to get started with great online promotions.