Using a range to media and programming to raise brand awareness
New York – You can have the finest product in the world, but without the proper marketing and messaging campaign behind it’s often not enough to be truly impactful.
It’s why Supima, the premium cotton fiber resource, is announcing a stepped-up marketing effort for 2021 that cuts across multiple disciplines, including print, electronics, social media and special events. The program continues the aggressive campaign Supima has pursued over the past years and is in fact a reflection of its branding efforts going back to its origins in 1954.
At Supima’s recent Fall Harvest event, held virtually for the first time due to pandemic conditions, it laid out its current initiatives as part of a broad program for its suppliers, retail partners and growers. In past years they were hosted in California’s Central Valley where most Supima cotton is grown and shown first-hand the entire process from farm to cotton gin to certification and verification processes.
This time it was all online, which allowed Supima to tell its story and outline its marketing campaign as viewers watched on their computer screens. Marc Lewkowitz, president of Supima, captured the overall feeling of this year’s very different presentation in saying the “new normal” dictated new approaches to doing business.
n the final day of the three-day virtual conference, Buxton Midyette, vice president of marketing and promotions, gave an overview of Supima’s marketing campaign, putting it in the context of its original ads from the 1950s and 1960s that, as he said, “always had an upscale image telling the premium aspect but trying to have a little fun, too.”
The current program is themed “Grow With Us” and “harkens back to the natural roots of Supima,” he said. The hashtag #cultivatinggood is used on social media to help tell the story as well.
Suppliers and brands using the fiber not only can take advantage of the marketing efforts of Supima itself but also other users who actively promote it to consumers. As an example he highlighted a campaign Brooks Bros. has done on New York City subway cars, the in-store point-of-sale signage employed by apparel retailer Uniqlo and print ad campaigns from a variety of companies, including Theory and Lands End in fashion apparel and WestPoint Home in bed and bath.
Midyette also reviewed all the promotional tools Supima uses on an ongoing basis to promote its fiber and the brands that use it. These include sponsoring business-to-business webinars with several media sources, including Home Textiles Today and The Sourcing Journal as well as public relations efforts that have resulted in widespread coverage in such media as The New Yorker, House Beautiful, Good Morning America, People and The Huffington Post.
Supima also sponsors a number of special events – on hold during the pandemic – including its annual Fashion Design Competition and the Design Lab that provides Supima fabric to cutting edge designers for new fashion creations.
He also reviewed the marketing tools Supima provides for its members, including handbooks on Branding Usage Guidelines, Marketing & Training Resources and the Social Media toolkit.
It’s a comprehensive suite and as Lewkowitz told the audience wrapping up the event. “We need these better communications with our customers that create smarter consumers for the Supima brand.”
Proving once more that Supima is much more than just the world’s finest cotton: it’s also one of the world’s best marketers.