Case Study 02:
‘47 Brand Social Refresh & Influencer Strategy
47 arrived at a pivotal moment in its brand evolution. The social presence reflected the heritage of the brand, but not the direction it was heading.
Content was inconsistent, engagement was low, and the channels lacked a clear lifestyle identity, personality, or strategic framework.
The brand had the product, the league partnerships, and the legacy, but it needed a recognizable social identity & a community that felt engaged and heard. And it needed product in the hands of the right people whose organic endorsement would carry weight.
The desire to be a lifestyle brand needed a total content & strategic refresh
The Situation:
The Strategy:
Reposition '47 on social from a heritage hat brand to a leading lifestyle brand with heritage at its core.
That meant rebuilding the social strategy from the ground up & establishing a defined brand personality, platform-specific playbooks, an always-on community management practice, and an influencer seeding program that got product into the hands of the right people across fashion, sports, and culture.
The goal wasn't just more content, it was building a presence that made other brands ask questions and vendors want in on. A full rebuild of how '47 showed up, spoke, and connected across every channel.
The Tools:
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Establishing the blend of ‘47’s heritage and a modern personality on social
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Each platform & each vertical needs its own direction that fits the overall strategy
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The key factor to the social success at ‘47 all stems from the community management, interacting with consumers. and making sure ‘47 was in the mix in the algorithm
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Video content became an immediate must improve in order to turn this brand into a true lifestyle brand.
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Building a new content and revenue source while helping the brand take the next step in presence and awareness
‘47 had a rich story to tell & the job was finding the voice to tell it in a way that resonated without losing what made the brand special. After coming across past brand documentation rooted almost entirely in heritage, family history, and legacy, we realized none of it translated to how a lifestyle brand needed to sound on social in 2023. From there, the social-specific voice and tone guide from scratch was built to fix that.
This guide developed a defined set of brand personality traits that shifted '47's social identity from solely heritage-first storytelling to a culture-forward brand that wore its history confidently rather than leaning on it as a crutch. That voice helped create community management voice guidelines as well that gave the team a clear, consistent framework for how '47 engaged in comments, replied to fans, and showed up in outside conversations.
Brand Tone & Voice Guide
The personality guide gives the brand a defined identity that can live consistently across every platform, every caption, and every community interaction.
Shifts the brand narrative from heritage-first storytelling to lifestyle-forward communication that wore its 75-year history as a strength rather than a crutch & our personality shows it.
Gave the marketing team a clear, shared reference point, ensuring '47 sounded like '47 whether it was a product launch post, a collab announcement, or a comment reply during March Madness.
This personality framework became the foundation for everything that followed as they all filtered through the same five traits.
Defined four distinct consumer archetypes that reflected the true breadth of '47's audience, our ensuring content and engagement strategy never defaulted to serving just one type of follower.
Gave the brand a shared language for content decisions within every post, campaign, and community interaction & it could be mapped back to which persona it was serving and why.
Personas create an informed platform strategy, understanding where each persona lives online and how they consume ‘47 content, which shapes posting approach for each channel
Ensures community management was proactive rather than reactive, knowing what kind of person I’m replying to in the comments & can engage with intention and consistency
Platform Playbooks
Developed platform-specific playbooks for Instagram, X, & TikTok as part of the master social strategy – each defining its own content mix, visual identity and format priorities.
Defined content format priorities per platform to ensure the team was producing the right asset types rather than repurposing one piece of content across all channels & differentiated from paid media
Designed each platform playbook to give myself a clear, repeatable framework & eliminate guesswork, ensuring every piece of content published had a reason behind it.
Instagram Playbook
Instagram Results
X Playbook
X Results
TikTok Playbook
TikTok Results
Community Management
Community management was never an afterthought at '47, it was a core pillar of the social strategy from day one. The goal was simple but ambitious: make '47 the most engaging, most responsive, and most personality-driven brand in the sports apparel space. Every comment reply, every fan interaction, every moment we showed up in someone else's conversation was an opportunity to reinforce who '47 was and make the community feel like the brand actually saw them.
The results spoke for themselves. What started as a strategic priority became a genuine differentiator as other brands began taking notice, vendors started asking how they could get involved in '47's social presence, and the community grew into one of the brand's most valuable assets. When people talked about '47 on social, they didn’t just talk about product and that didn’t happen by accident.
Video Content & Philosophy
From day one, video at '47 was a primary content engine built into the overarching strategy. '47's social refresh was built with video as a core pillar across every platform & the philosophy was simple: elevated video that felt native to the brand but at a new level, product video that sold without feeling like an ad, and moment-driven video that created a feeling & kept '47 culturally relevant in real time.
All three had to coexist and all three had to feel unmistakably '47.
Elevated Product Video
From day one, video at '47 was a primary content engine built into the overarching strategy. '47's social refresh was built with video as a core pillar across every platform & the philosophy was simple: elevated video that felt native to the brand but at a new level, product video that sold without feeling like an ad, and moment-driven video that created a feeling & kept '47 culturally relevant & maintain that heritage that carried the brand for 75 years.
All three had to coexist and all three had to feel unmistakably '47.
Brand & Storytelling Video
With 75 years of history behind it, '47 had a deeper story to tell than any brand in the sports apparel space and including that storytelling in our video efforts was the best way to tell it.
These weren't product videos with a heritage angle tacked on, they were dedicated pieces of content built around the brand's roots and the moments that made '47 what it is today. Keeping the heritage alive while pushing the brand forward was one of the central creative tensions of the entire social refresh, and storytelling video was the most powerful tool for holding both truths at once.
Moment-Focused Video
Some of the most powerful content '47 produced wasn't just about the product, it was about the feeling that video was trying to tap into.
Moment-focused video was built around the sports and cultural moments that '47's audience already cared deeply about, using nostalgia, emotion, and atmosphere to create content that stopped the scroll not because of what was being sold but because of what was being felt.
A championship celebration. A stadium at full capacity. A city rallying around its team. These moments were for the fans & when it landed rightm it resonated.
Tentpole Activations & Brand Partnerships
'47's tentpole strategy was built around one belief, which was that the biggest moments in sports and culture are opportunities to show the world who the brand is, not just what it sells.
Every activation was planned with a content-first mindset, ensuring that whether '47 was opening a store in London or launching a NASCAR partnership, the social presence matched the excitement of the moment. We also wanted to make sure that we were showcasing the product, the event and the partnership in unique ways that will stand apart from the rest.
MLB All-Star 2023 - Seattle
The Seattle All-Star Weekend was one of the most layered activations of my '47 tenure: A Diet Starts Monday collab, a retail event in partnership with Nordstrom, and an entirely organic partnership with Pike Place Fish Market that happened on a walk around the market, leading to one of the most authentic brand moments of the year and a testament to what happens when you stay open to the unexpected & think on the fly.
The content strategy had to serve multiple storylines simultaneously - the partnership, the retail experience, and the on-site organic moments while making all of it feel cohesive and native to '47's voice.
The MLB London Series gave '47 one of its most unique content opportunities with a retail moment in one of the world's most culturally relevant cities.
With a SoHo store opening as the centerpiece, the content strategy was built to capture the energy of American baseball landing in London while positioning '47 as a brand that belonged in that conversation.
MLB London Series 2023
NFL Draft & NBA All-Star 2024 - ‘47 x Tyrrell Winston
The 2024 NFL Draft & NBA All-Star Weekend activations centered around a partnership with artist Tyrrell Winston that blended '47's sports roots with the art and culture world in a way that leaned into the roots of The Motor City for the draft & celebrating legacy and heritage at All-Star Weekend.
The content strategy was built around the art, the product collab, and the energy of weekend, which gave '47 a unique presence at some of the biggest stages of each sport with a unique product to pair.
Super Bowl LVIII - Las Vegas
The Super Bowl partnership with Stoney Clover Lane brought two distinct brand audiences together around football's biggest moment. The content strategy leaned into the fashion and lifestyle angle that Stoney Clover Lane's audience expects while keeping '47's sports lifestyle credibility front and center, a balance that made the collab feel natural to both sides of the partnership.
The on-site activation & the content around it achieved the goal of showcasing that perfect balance & included a surprise product moment from the Mom of the Day, Donna Kelce.
NASCAR x ‘47 Partnership
The NASCAR partnership was a full brand entry into a new sporting world that needed a merchandise refresh and the content strategy reflected that.
With product that NASCAR fans were relieved to see, followed by signing William Byron as a signature athlete & doing a product collaboration with Daniel Suarez, the partnership came out of the gates hot and brought a culturally relevant storyline to the launch. The social content was built to introduce '47 to a NASCAR audience that may not have engaged with the brand before, while building credibility in a brand new space.
Influencer & Creator Strategy
When '47 made the decision to evolve into a true lifestyle brand, it was clear that the social strategy needed to extend beyond the brand's own channels. The influencer and seeding program was built to get '47 on the right people across sports, fashion, and lifestyle and let the product do the talking.
The program was built across every tier of the creator world from micro-influencers, to celebrities & tastemakers in fashion and lifestyle, but the criteria was always the same regardless of following size. Does this person actually fit the brand? Would their audience believe this post? We didn’t want a '47 hat showing up on someone's feed to just feel like every other ad. The seeding decision was made with the ocontent that felt like their post, not ours.
Over time, product started showing up organically on the right people at the right moments, new communities discovered '47 through voices they already trusted, and it felt that our efforts were growing into one of the brand's most intriguing content & revenue avenues