Campaign Trail: Shinola and ‘Succession’ star set the pace in anxious ad

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Created with agency GentleForces, the Detroit-based design company’s first brand campaign features and was directed by actor Nicholas Braun.

Campaign Trail is our analysis of some of the best new creative efforts from the marketing world. View past columns in the archives here .

In the pilot episode of HBO hit “Succession,” patriarch Logan Roy is given a high-end timepiece as a birthday gift by his daughter’s fiancé, Tom Wambsgans. “It's incredibly accurate,” Tom jokes about the watch. “Every time you look at it, it tells you exactly how rich you are!”

That’s generally the spirit of most watch ads, with their close-ups of fine engineering and high-class lifestyle imagery. But it wouldn’t work in a campaign for the Runwell, the signature watch manufactured by Detroit-based design brand Shinola.

“When you look at most other watch brands, the advertising can get a little bit more traditional: focused on craftsmanship, heritage, luxury and specifications,” said Dana Mosa-Basha, Shinola’s director of marketing. “Shinola really exists in a white space.”

To introduce the Runwell to a new audience, Shinola in July launched a brand campaign “Set the Pace.” The effort, created in partnership with agency GentleForces, centers on the idea of consumers changing their relationship with time, and it stars and was directed by Nicholas Braun — an actor best known for playing cousin Greg, Tom’s mentee/punching bag, on “Succession.”

When conceptualizing the spot, Shinola reached out to Braun, noting that the brand wasn’t looking for a spokesperson or an ambassador but someone who would shape the work in a way that didn’t feel like simply cutting a check to a celebrity. The actor proposed that he direct the spot, and once he got the gig, participated in every creative decision during pre-production, helping to inform the script, visuals, styling and even extras casting.

“He naturally embodied that curiosity. He's very funny without trying, but also very human and approachable, and that authenticity matched the brand,” Mosa-Basha said of Braun.

The result is a 60-second piece that Mosa-Basha said some people have described as a “psychological thriller,” with a hectic restaurant setting and a soundtrack composed of an accelerating tick of a watch. Braun’s emotional monologue appears to be some sort of relationship ultimatum before it is revealed that he is speaking to the Runwell, which doesn’t appear until the final seconds of the spot.

“I would say 90% of the discussions we had with [GentleForces] were more about meaning, before the actual visuals of it all,” Mosa-Basha said. “We wanted to communicate this message that your time belongs to you. It doesn't belong to anyone else. It doesn't even belong to a watch. It really belongs to the person behind it all, and the watch is just a representation of that.”

Founded in 2011, Shinola has never run a full-funnel brand campaign before “Set the Pace.” But with new creative director Jonathan Bailey, a veteran of Coach and Tiffany, on board, it was time to bring awareness to the brand outside of watch enthusiasts, position Shinola as a culturally relevant brand and lean into human-first storytelling.

“We wanted to make sure this is going to be designed to tell a story across editorial, retail, PR, influencer partnerships, paid media, organic and social,” Mosa-Basha said. “It was less about adapting to different channels, but really designing all of this content for them from the beginning.”

That strategy informs an approach to media that sees Shinola spread its marketing budget across upper, mid and lower funnel tactics. Reimagining the campaign for different channels is more than just cropping and fixing sizes of creative: It has to be integrated strategically from the beginning, whether creating the commercial, organic social media or influencer content.

“When your storytelling is on lock and working really well, then your performance marketing is going to go a long way,” Mosa-Basha said.

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