THE FABRIC OF OUR LIVES Campaign

Overview

Whether sung by Aaron Neville or Richie Havens, the tag line "The fabric of our lives" has given a definite identity to a product that might otherwise seem anonymous. Sponsored by Cotton Incorporated, a trade organization for the cotton industry, "The Fabric of Our Lives" became a classic image campaign, designed to heighten awareness rather than to sell a specific brand.

The "brand," in fact, was cotton, as television viewers discovered after the Thanksgiving 1989 launch of the campaign. The first wave of commercials, with music by singer-songwriter Havens, showed people in ordinary, everyday situations, with the natural cotton of their clothing as an ever present backdrop. Thus the campaign turned what could have been a liability—-the fact that cotton so completely fit into ordinary life that people hardly noticed it—into an asset.

Fresh on the heels of the Clio-winning first wave came three more advertising programs over the course of a decade, all of them tied to the "Fabric of Our Lives" theme. Geared toward baby boomers, the group who in the 1960s had set the tone for natural products over synthetics, the ongoing campaign in its later incarnations sought to influence generation Xers as well,

Historical Context

Between 1960 and 1975 the cotton industry underwent a crisis. From having a 78 percent share of all retail textile products, cotton dropped to a low of 34 percent. This was due in large part to the increased use of synthetics such as polyester. Eventually cotton growers and others in the industry realized that they had better do something or confront the end of cotton as a viable business in the United States. The result was the creation, in 1970, of Cotton Incorporated.

The purpose of Cotton Inc. was not simply to increase sales of cotton. That of course was its ultimate goal, but it would achieve this through increasing the awareness of cotton. Thus, one of the organization's important early achievements was the creation of the so-called Seal of Cotton in 1973. The symbol—the word "cotton" spelled out in billowy letters, with the two ts blossoming into a mushroom cloud of cotton-established an identity for the industry.

Over the years Cotton Inc. would track public recognition of the symbol as a measure of the awareness of cotton itself. A more cotton-conscious public would be more likely to purchase cotton-only products and to develop reliable buying habits with regard to clothing, home furnishings, and other products. From 1974 the organization began advertising on television, using campaigns built around the Seal of Cotton, In 1976, just three years after its introduction, consumer awareness of the seal had risen to 45 percent

Target Market

In the mid-1970s cotton faced not only an upsurge in man-made fibers such as polyester but also a public that was partial to synthetics and a textile industry that had shifted much of its

production away from cotton. Yet there was also a natural market for cotton, a group that would respond if Cotton Inc. took the proper approach to appeal to them.

This group was made up of baby boomers, born in the 18-year period that began in 1946. Raised in wealth and comfort unimagined by previous generations, the group disdained the trappings of status and instead sought out that which was simple, natural, and pure. Cotton Inc. was not slow to note an obvious constituency for cotton, not merely as a fabric but also as an idea. As the organization's own literature observed, a generation "was literally growing up in 100 percent cotton denim jeans and T-shirts."

Many years later, after the message of Cotton Inc. had become firmly established among baby boomers, the organization would note a lack of cotton awareness among generation Xers and would direct the fourth wave of its fabric campaign to them. Nonetheless, as Cotton Inc. president and CEO J, Berrye Worsham told S. Gray Maycumber of the Daily News Record, "The number-one focus is still on baby boomers and secondly on youth."

Competition

When Cotton Inc. first began its work in the 1970s, the primary competition for cotton came from polyester, a man-made cotton substitute. Polyester had the advantage of being a wash-and-wear fabric. Whereas a cotton shirt came out of a clothes dryer hopelessly wrinkled, a polyester shirt was ready to wear.

Got Freedom?

In 1997 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Wileman v. Glickman that the federal government could require members of an Industry to fund generic advertising such as Cotton Incorporated's "Fabric of Our Lives" campaign. Under the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had the power to enact "marketing orders" involving generic advertising for a number of commodities. Thus, not only could Cotton Inc. rely on compulsory funding by cotton growers and importers, so too could the organizations represented by such well-known campaigns as "Pork: The Other White Meat" and "Got Milk?"

Justice John Paul Stevens, delivering the opinion for the 5-4 majority, stated that "the marketing orders impose no restraint on the freedom of any producer to communicate any message to any audience…" He was joined by justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Steven Breyer. Justice David Souter, writing for the dissenters—himself. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and justices Antonia Scalia and Clarence Thomas—held that "the legitimacy of governmental regulation does not validate coerced subsidies for speech that the government cannot show to be reasonably necessary…"

Polyester was, as Cotton Inc. noted in its own literature, "an 'easy-care' alternative for a 'push-button' society." It also had a marketing structure worthy of emulation. "In the past," Cotton Inc. reported, "cotton producers would end their involvement with a crop at point of sale, confident in

the market's ability to consume cotton. But… polyester was being aggressively marketed and merchandised at every point throughout the pipeline: from mills and manufacturers to retailers and consumers. Such producers as DuPont and Celanese were committed to cultivating demand for their products through promotions and technical service assistance. The U.S. cotton industry, however, had no such system available to build demand and support its markets."

By the mid-1980s the heyday of synthetics had passed—thanks more to changes in fashion and lifestyles than anything else—but this did not mean that cotton's competition was gone. Wool was another natural fabric, although its uses were mostly limited to wintertime wear. Much more threatening to U.S. growers was the increase in cotton imports from other countries. But perhaps the greatest threat came from the same place as before—lack of consumer awareness. It was a concern that provided a continuing basis for the "Fabric of Our Lives" ad campaign.

Marketing Strategy

In 1998 an executive of Cotton Inc. gave Maycumber of the Daily News Record a succinct statement of purpose, both for the organization and for the advertising campaign: "Young people are wearing more cotton, but are less fiber aware. They may say they prefer cotton, but if they don't look at the label when they buy, it doesn't do us any good." The purpose of the fabric campaign, then, was to create such a strong sense of identification with cotton that consumers would become loyal and thus always look for the cotton label.

J. Nicholas Hahn, who led Cotton Inc. from 1971 to 1996, during the years when it grew from obscurity to national prominence, discussed the impetus for the "Fabric of Our Lives" campaign with Carl Gustin, Jr., of Advertising Age in 1998. Having once used a co-op approach, joining with manufacturers who used cotton in their products, the organization decided in the mid-1980s to take a generic strategy instead and contracted with the legendary advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather. "Cotton is ubiquitous," Hahn said, "used in everything from slacks to underwear to sheets. We wanted [Ogilvy & Mather] to develop a single theme that would transcend the vast variety of end uses, and that was not easy. We spent many months brainstorming, but they came up with the theme: 'Cotton. The fabric of our lives.' It evolved from the fact that the moment you're born you're wrapped in a cotton blanket, and this continues throughout your life, with jeans, socks, sheets, towels… That theme was the turning point in our communications strategy."

The campaign has been primarily oriented toward television although its second wave, in late 1994 and early 1995, consisted of a consumer promotion in Reader's Digest magazine. In 1995 Cotton Inc. launched the third wave of "The Fabric of Our Lives" with a set of commercials built around sporting events such as figure skating, along with other attention-getting programs on television. This phase consisted of seven commercials, each of which celebrated an important moment in a person's life—for example, a birth or a marriage—with an emphasis on what Cotton Inc. called "traditional American values."

Although the first three phases had clearly been directed toward an older market, not so the fourth. Launched in September 1998, this push for generation Xers cost $35 million, or $2 million more than Cotton Inc. had spent on the third phase, and involved a focus on four categories of cotton products: denim, underwear, sheets, and corporate casual wear as

popularized by the increasingly informal dress codes at many business. The commercials featured celebrities such as Democratic strategist James Carville and Republican strategist Mary Matalin, fierce political rivals who happened to be married to one another.

Outcome

Cotton reassumed its leadership position among textiles in 1987, two years before the organization launched the "Fabric of Our Lives" campaign, and growth continued consistently year after year as the campaign continued. By 1998 cotton held a 60 percent market share in retail apparel and home fabrics, and Cotton Inc. had offices in Mexico, Japan, Switzerland, Singapore, and China to promote international sales of U.S. cotton.

In 1991, thanks in large part to the "Fabric of Our Lives" campaign, the awareness of the Seal of Cotton reached a high of 73 percent. Awareness would eventually stabilize at about 70 percent, buoyed by the powerful advertising campaign. In a mid-1990s survey of 2,000 consumers by Roper Starch Worldwide, in which participants were asked to identify corporate logos, the seal ranked third in recognizability, placing it above well-known symbols such as the Prudential Insurance rock and the Merrill Lynch bull.

The commercials themselves won numerous awards, including a Clio for the first wave and in 1998 a silver Effie. Also in 1998, Ogilvy & Mather gave Hahn its D.O. (David Ogilvy) Award, the first time an individual outside the agency had received the honor. As the agency celebrated its 50th anniversary in that year, a survey found that "The Fabric of Our Lives" was the third most recognizable of its campaigns, close behind "Good to the Last Drop" for Maxwell House and "The Great American Chocolate Bar" for Hershey.