Cotton is an omnipresent fabric many take for granted. New fibers touting their unique benefits are becoming all the rage and standing out at retail. Items that were once synonymous with cotton are slowly being usurped by synthetic fabrics. Cotton’s market share in women’s denim dropped from 88% in 2012 to 77% in 2019, with 100% cotton jeans only at 7% and synthetic market share growing. While our audience loves denim and wears a lot of it, they don’t realize denim is synonymous with cotton. In fact, according to Merriam-Webster, denim is definitively cotton. So even though we don’t make or sell jeans (Cotton Incorporated’s sole purpose is to drive interest in cotton), our objective was clear: to reclaim denim as an iconic cotton item by strengthening cotton’s connection to it. The goal was to increase cotton’s association with denim by at least 5%.

History showed us that denim rose to prominence when we needed strength most—inside and out. During World War II, a generation of women changed the face of the American workforce. They became welders, riveters, and factory workers, finding an inner strength in their newfound skills and independence. And they did it in denim—a quintessentially American cotton fabric that was as durable and resilient as they were. These women, and the cotton denim they wore, became a symbol of women’s empowerment.

We brought the spirit of Rosie into the 21st century with Rosie Reborn, a campaign that honors the strides women have made in the workforce over the past 75 years and celebrates the fabric they did it in. We inspired the next generation of Rosies with the mantra: Cotton makes denim strong, but it’s the women who wear it that make it powerful.

Our audience was “Fashion Forwards,” women who love shopping (about 62% of women), because the more they shop, the more cotton they buy. While they love denim and own a lot of it (6 pairs on average), most of them don’t know what it’s made of, especially those under 30. They buy by brand, style, and fit with little thought to ingredients. Many assume their denim is cotton but few check the label. We needed to make sure they knew that cotton is what makes their favorite jeans comfortable, age beautifully, and make them feel amazing. To reinforce campaign messaging, the media plan was developed to generate video views and brand engagement. It utilized a variety of targeting methods including contextual and third-party data to focus on consumers who exhibited characteristics of the Cotton audience and of Rosie herself (i.e., fashion enthusiasts, self-confident women, career-oriented women, empowered women).

We partnered with influencers and fashion designers Emily Current and Meritt Elliot of THE GREAT to reimagine the Rosie the Riveter-era jumpsuit for the modern-day Rosie. Utilizing original Rosie denim, THE GREAT’s re-engineered design honored the past and celebrated our future.

We selected women breaking barriers in male-dominated industries to represent our modern-day Rosies:

· Carli Lloyd, world champion soccer player

· Kimberly Bryant, electrical engineer, founder of Black Girls Code

· Barbie Parsons, metal sculptor, author and educator

· Julia Gamolina, architect

We developed social assets to drive engagement and online videos to drive awareness of the connection between cotton and denim. The campaign launched in mid-February 2020 to get a jumpstart on celebrating Women’s History month across digital (Hulu and YouTube) and social (Facebook and Instagram), including the channels of all our Modern-Day Rosies.

The campaign got over 17 Billion earned media impressions. It started with the Today show inviting 3 of our modern-day Rosies to the program to talk about the campaign and share their stories of barrier-breaking achievements. From there, pick-up from female-focused publications like WWD and Bustle, business publications like Forbes, and websites such as Yahoo! Finance to help further amplify the campaign and connect with our target in contextually relevant spaces. It drove our highest-earned media impression to date.

As a result, cotton’s association with denim increased by 9% for our target and 79% of our audience said the campaign taught them that denim is made from cotton. Our mission to better connect cotton to denim and reclaim this hero item was successful. The campaign also exceeded the brand’s social engagements and benchmarks across all channels by an average of 40%.