• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, December 5, 2011

Geeks have been kind to T-shirt company Threadless. One fan had enough time to take a T-shirt called "The Communist Party" and turn it into a cake.

On CNN, a kid who refused to say the pledge of allegiance in school wore a "Nerds Too Square Forever" shirt, leading to plenty of exposure. That kind of publicity "really does all of the hard work for me and our company in getting people to talk about our products," said CMO Cam Balzer at the MediaPost Email Insider Summit.

“Wearing a T-shirt is a fundamentally social act … you want to kind o draw out some of the other geeks in the crowd,” Balzer said.

He advised marketers in almost any field to try and tap into a passionate geek audience through social media. “If you sell insurance, there are probably like actuarial geeks out there who would like nothing better than a place to hang out and share (thoughts) about actuarial geekery.”