When I was a kid, the height of cool was to collect a T-shirt from a Hard Rock Café in every city you visited. That tee with its iconic red-and-yellow logo and city name scrawled underneath was shorthand for summertime shenanigans – telling the world where you’d been on vacation and what you did when you were there.

The way T-shirts can quickly convey a wealth of information is part of the reason they’re the most powerful promo item out there and why they should definitely take the top spot in our ASI Promo Insanity contest.

Just think about it. For decades, T-shirts have served as the quintessential canvas for personal branding, allowing the wearer to show off the concerts they’ve attended, the schools they graduated from, the brands they love, the races they’ve run – basically, all the things they’ve done. Raid a stranger’s closet or sleuth through their dresser drawers and, based solely on their collection of T-shirts, you can get a pretty good idea of their personality, habits and routines. (Please don’t actually raid a stranger’s closet, though. That’s creepy.)

It’s been a lot longer than one week since I got this Barenaked Ladies tee at a concert with my now-husband, and even though it’s seen better days, I wouldn’t give it up even if I had a million dollars.

Consider this stat from ASI’s most recent Ad Impressions Study: 80% of people own at least one promotional T-shirt, and they keep that tee an average of 14 months. Or in the case of certain favorite tees I have, 14 years. I have a Barenaked Ladies concert shirt that I’m pretty sure is old enough to drink now. When it comes to holding onto these cherished items of clothing, I know I’m not alone.

Beyond their ubiquity, the other nice thing about T-shirts is the variety available from apparel suppliers. There’s a dizzying array of colors, styles, constructions and fits available at a few clicks of a button – from tangerine to taupe, boxy to baby doll, V-neck to scoop, combed cotton to slick synthetics and everything in between. There’s a T-shirt to fit every occasion and flatter any figure. And thanks to the advent of easy online ordering and on-demand printing, promotional products distributors can enable end-users to get the style, size and color they truly want.

I got this promotional T-shirt from Carnival Corp. at CES a few years ago. The fabric is so comfortable and the imprint so simple that it’s held a special spot in my dresser ever since.

I also love to see the creative way screen printers and other decorators transform T-shirts into walking works of art. I’m a sucker for gimmicks like scented ink, foil transfers, glow-in-the-dark prints and some well-placed bling. But even a simple one- or two-color print can have maximum impact if it’s designed cleanly and executed perfectly.

One of my favorite promotional shirts is a tee I nabbed from Carnival Corp. at CES a few years ago. It’s an ocean blue shirt made of a stretchy, soft cotton-poly blend, with a one-color white print: a stylized medallion with the word “O.C.E.A.N.” underneath. The same logo is printed smaller on the back of the shirt, along with a tagline and a handful of corporate logos along the bottom hem. I’ve never been on a Carnival ship (I’m not even a huge fan of cruises in the best of times), but I still wear that shirt all the time. Why do I love it so much? It’s comfy and brightly colored, and the logo itself is fairly subtle, so I don’t mind giving a little free publicity to the company in exchange. And that’s just the power of the T-shirt at work.