Partnership With Athletes Creates Cotton Connection

• By Stacey Gorman,
The Cotton Board,
Director of Communications •

In 2018, Cotton Incorporated teamed up with the North Carolina Courage, a professional National Women’s Soccer League team. The partnership came at a great time. The North Carolina Courage team had a record-breaking season, and this partnership connected cotton to sports, women and the North Carolina community.

The North Carolina Courage soccer team and Cotton Incorporated are both based in Cary, North Carolina. The Courage finished the 2018 regular season with only one loss and broke the record for most wins in a season (17), most points (57) and most goals (530).

They went on to win the 2018 NWSL Championship and completed one of the most successful seasons for a professional women’s soccer team in the United States.

Comfortable Equals Confident

The Cotton Incorporated partnership included in-stadium logo visibility and field staff t-shirts with the seal of cotton trademark prominently displayed on both. The players participated in a series of YouTube videos in which they interviewed each other about how they maintain a sense of confidence in their daily lives.

Professional athletes know that what you wear can have a big effect on your self-assurance. This belief made them ideal spokespeople to talk to consumers about how feeling comfortable in your clothes can also make you feel confident.

The videos tie back to Cotton Incorporated’s current consumer-facing advertising campaign, “Life is Uncomfortable,” and include the athletes’ exploring their most uncomfortable moments.

In turn, it promotes cotton’s emotional and physical role in an increasingly uncomfortable world. One video concludes with NC Courage star Abby Erceg saying the tagline, “Life is uncomfortable, your clothes don’t have to be.”

Connection To Consumers

Letting consumers get to know the NC Courage team also meant getting to know more about cotton. One blog post on Cotton Incorporated’s consumer-facing website, thefabricofourlives.com, asks, “Did you know that cotton is the comfiest athleisure fiber, and that it breathes better during a workout than synthetics?

Cotton also washes cleaner than polyester, so your active or athleisure wardrobe won’t keep smelling even after laundry day. No matter where life takes you, cotton has your back, so you can focus more on your goals and less on your clothes.”

The program concluded with Cotton Incorporated hosting a denim drive for its Blue Jeans Go Green denim-recycling program during a NC Courage game. This allowed attendees to donate their used denim to be upcycled into housing insulation for communities in need.

Partnerships like this allow cotton’s message to be told full-circle by introducing consumers to cotton’s functionality, fashionability, sustainability and social responsibility.

To learn more, please email Gorman at sgorman@cottonboard.org.