I’m not sure about you, but I often find myself humming or singing along as someone on TV sings “the touch the feel of cotton, the fabric of our lives.” But have you ever stopped to wonder why there are ads for cotton on TV?

Well, its easy enough of an answer. The ad campaigns for cotton are funded through a commodity program that seeks to increase the marketability of my favorite fiber. And Cotton Inc. comes up with the awesome creative (as you probably guessed, the Zooey Deschanel part of the campaign cause I love her voice and sense of style too).

What a lot of people don’t realize is that cotton farmers pay for those ads as do people who import cotton. It’s a way for these groups to pool funds to support market awareness. It’s fairly easy to understand that farmers would like to keep cotton top of mind and since the makers of all the synthetic fibers like polyester have ad budgets, advertising is part of it. I can certainly remember various fibers — rayon, tencel, etc suggesting they have benefits over natural fiber.

Another part of the financial resources goes to research and development of textile processes, cotton production practices, etc which help keep cotton competitive with synthetic fibers in other areas or even help discover new uses. Those activities help provide a return to the people funding the program. It is pretty ingenious and I have to say, for me, the ads provide a look at natural fibers as fashionable and comfortable.

And knowing how much goes into the seal of cotton (all that research in endorsed by farmers), I always feel buying a product that has the familiar cotton logo on it!

If that’s not all reason enough to check into the things cotton farmers are funding, I’ll be a name dropper. Long-time friend in the cotton industry, Louisiana cotton farmer Jay Hardwick currently is serving as the chairman of Cotton Inc. And Jay totally rocks! If you don’t know that, you must have missed the spot America’s Heartland did on Jay Hardwick last year — you really should get caught up on that.

Information for people who enjoy cotton clothes and textiles is available from:

• Websites for Cotton Inc include the fashion-oriented thefabricofourlives.com,
• There is a Facebook cotton page  (who doesn’t “like” cotton?)
• Fashionable tweets go out from @CottonFashion.
• And great videos are on the CottonFabricofOurLives YouTube Channel.

Farmers, importers, etc who want information on the programs of Cotton Inc can check out:

• The organization’s activities on a broader basis cottoninc.com — you should also check out the sustainability site at CottonToday
• You can like Cotton Inc on Facebook for info.
• Tweets from @CottonInc

The post What’s the Fabric of our Lives About? Why Advertise Cotton? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

On several posts previously I’ve talked about little ways to sort of wear agriculture on your sleeve so you serve as a walking reminder of farmers when you are going about the day-to-day. Things like wearing a where’s the farmer t-shirt, using a luggage tag that boasts your favorite crop or picking out a license plate that reflects your passion for farming. But this week as I’m walking around Atlanta, I will tackle another sense too — hearing. Well, I’ve actually done it for a while but I just thought to blog about it.

My love of music spilled over to my mobile phone the minute I got a phone that could play different tunes. I’ve done a number of songs to entertain while I was answering a phone call. One of my favorite summers of field days included “Blister in the Sun” by the Violent Femmes as the prominent ringtone. And as I made my first visit to a livestock show, I put George Strait’s “Cowboys Like Us” on the phone for a friend or two.

But it’s time for the Beltwide Cotton Conference and the American Farm Bureau annual meeting and that means all things cotton and agriculture, especially for someone like me who decided to take the moniker “JPlovesCOTTON” for Twitter and my blog. So this week I have a few different ringtones set for things but several of them will be cotton ringtones!

Before you start trying to think of all the cotton songs you can come up with, let me get more specific. I’ll be a walking billboard for Cotton Inc. If you don’t know about Cotton Inc, the organization is funded by U.S. growers of upland cotton and importers of cotton and cotton textile products. It provides the research and marketing efforts to promote upland cotton as well as improve the demand for and profitability of cotton. More information on cotton and Cotton Incorporated can be found at www.cottoninc.com.

So I’ll have snippets of the songs about the touch, the feel of cotton, the fabric of our lives playing. I have four versions of it. The music from this year’s advertising campaign artists Colbie Caillat and Leona Lewis can be found on thefabricofourlives.com/music (one of Cotton Inc’s websites). And a little looking around, you can see some of the cotton clothes in their closets (Leona Lewis link & Colbie Caillat). I really enjoyed last year’s campaign too — Zooey Deschanel and Miranda Lambert did songs for 2009-2010.

The artists and the versions of the songs are fairly diverse just like the people who love jeans, buttondowns, t-shirts and all the other great cotton that comes from the farmers who fund these ads and all the research that goes into Cotton Inc.

Rather than follow me around during AgConnect or the American Farm Bureau’s annual meeting just waiting for my phone to ring, you can just take a look and listen at the videos I’m posting them here. Snippets of this version and others are my ringtones.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NEJlz1-djY]

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