As it looks to stimulate demand for cotton across the supply chain, Cotton Incorporated is bolstering its marketing and brand positioning efforts with the creation of a chief marketing officer role.
Following a lengthy and “intensive” search that “cast a very large net” to the industry and adjacent fields to find the right candidate, the cotton research and promotion organization has appointed Bev Sylvester as CMO to lead its marketing strategy. Sylvester, who starts on Feb. 2, comes to Cotton Incorporated with more than two decades of experience in marketing and branding across apparel and textiles, consumer goods and branded materials. She was most recently at synthetic fiber maker Unifi, where she led marketing for the producer’s Repreve recycled polyester across the supply chain.
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Cotton Incorporated sees Sylvester’s experience aligning with its own position as an ingredient brand. “[Bev] brings a lot of great experience at the fiber level, but also interactions and engagements with manufacturers, brands and retailers, so it’s a great fit,” William Kimbrell, president and CEO of Cotton Incorporated, told Sourcing Journal.
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Calling the CMO position “critically important,” Kimbrell explained that Cotton Incorporated is in a “demand-building mode.” Putting more emphasis on marketing and bringing it into the C-suite complements the work happening across the organization to drive cotton demand, including agricultural research, sustainability efforts and fiber competition initiatives.
“The scale of Cotton Incorporated’s work is tremendous—from textile research to product development to agronomy, to name just a few areas—and the opportunities to market those outputs to a diverse range of stakeholders is unique in our industry,” Sylvester said, pointing to this as one of the factors that appealed about the role.
A key competitive target for Cotton Incorporated is synthetic materials, and the organization leverages material science, sustainability research and fiber performance insights to differentiate itself from inputs like polyester, protecting cotton’s share in core categories—like denim—while bringing it into areas that are more typically made from synthetics—like active leggings.
Acknowledging the challenges cotton has faced in maintaining market share against synthetics—partly due to pricing—Kimbrell said Sylvester’s previous work in this competing segment of the industry is expected to support the organization’s efforts to drive cotton demand and adoption. “Bev coming from the synthetic world, she brings a lot of experience in knowing what those brands and retailers have been looking for and can help us out with positioning cotton in a good way for showing some of those natural solutions that maybe historically have come from the synthetic side,” he said.
In addition to naming its first CMO, the not-for-profit organization is uniting its global supply chain marketing and consumer marketing teams into one singular division led by Sylvester, creating a “360-degree” marketing approach that spans communications to manufacturers, brands and consumers. “There are a lot of new issues that are constantly evolving around textiles, and we really have seen this as an opportunity to kind of pull both supply chain and consumer marketing groups together to have a very unified approach to our marketing strategy in the industry,” Kimbrell explained.
While known to consumers via outreach such as the long-running “The Fabric of Our Lives” campaign, Cotton Incorporated also works within the industry to encourage and boost the use of cotton in textile programs. Although the consumer is a key piece of the puzzle, as Kimbrell noted, shoppers can’t buy cotton products unless brands and manufacturers produce and retail them. Therefore, the organization is focusing heavily on speaking to key decision-makers in the value chain. “We’re re-emphasizing and putting much more emphasis on the supply chain now, just to make sure that as we’re trying to stimulate cotton demand, we’re certainly pushing more to get it adopted by manufacturers, brands and retailers, ultimately, so then it can be pulled through to the consumer,” he said.
Sylvester’s experience marketing across audiences in the industry will come into play under this new merged marketing focus. “I’ve worked for both brands and textile companies, so I appreciate the importance of each link in the value chain—fiber and material decisions made by mills, manufacturers and brand sourcing teams determine what products are available and how they’re positioned at retail,” she said. “While I’ve seen the industry change considerably, I firmly believe excellent product that resonates with consumers is vital. This means understanding consumer needs and delivering innovation that addresses those needs. Cotton Incorporated’s unparalleled consumer insights have led to the development of an exceptional offering of product innovations that position cotton as the sustainable fiber of choice.”
Per Kimbrell, that sustainability story has grown over the years from investigating the inputs and footprint associated with cotton production to include aspects like compliance, traceability and circularity. Cotton Incorporated is watching these trends and positioning U.S. cotton to support the industry’s expanding sustainability needs.
Along with a unified marketing approach, the combined division is seen supporting greater flexibility, allowing quicker responses to changes, such as evolving regulations. Since its start over half a century ago, Cotton Incorporated has moved with its consumer expanding beyond channels like broadcast television to include streaming and social media, “modernizing with the modern-day consumer” to reach its target demographic of 18- to 34-year-old women who have “buying power,” are shopping for themselves and their families and value natural materials. On the supply chain side, Cotton Incorporated adjusts which markets it is targeting amid sourcing shifts, such as the recent growth in cotton fiber sales to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
In what is a challenging time for cotton farmers—in which they are facing pressures not limited to rising input costs, lower market prices for their fiber and tariff-related trade hurdles—generating demand is an urgent focus for the organization. Cotton Incorporated’s work is both funded by and revolves around cotton growers and importers, and its marketing initiatives are no different. “We’re always making sure that we’re really good stewards of their investment into our program and doing what we can to stimulate demand downstream,” said Kimbrell.
This passion for producers stood out to Sylvester as she met with her now-coworkers. “The organization’s mission to increase the demand for and profitability of cotton through research and promotion really resonates with me,” she said. “During the interview process it quickly became apparent that the mission is not an abstract concept but rather a north star that team members fully embrace.”
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