SJ Shanfield - Writer

Influencer Campaign - #TravelWithShinola

In an effort to increase Shinola’s leather sales, I created Shinola’s first dedicated influencer campaign where we paid Pinterest and Instagram influencers to create original content that was used cross promotionally to drive sales and build audiences. The result was not only beautiful content but a 67% boost in sales through social media on @shinola​. My favorite part was the extra step we took in creating blog posts as mini city guides. We partnered with Passion Passport for our influencer identification, but are proud to say we discovered and worked with most of these influencers on our own.

#TravelWithShinola: London

#TravelWithShinola: Copenhagen

#TravelWithShinola: South Korea

#TravelWithShinola: Mexico City

#TravelWithShinola: Colorado

#TravelWithShinola: New Zealand

#TravelWithShinola: Budapest

As part of their 2017 advertising campaign, @shinola asked audiences around the world how we 'Roll Up Our Sleeves' to get the job done. How do people give back to their communities, in the big ways, and in the small? As Editorial and Content director I provided creative direction to the very capable social and edit team to produce content showing this concept within their office walls, as well as a large-scale video ecosystem showcasing how it's all done around the city of Detroit. We then asked fans on social to send their stories for a chance to win a watch. Here's some of my favorite videos of this series: 

RUOS: Coach Khali (above)

RUOS: Anna Kohn of Recovery Park

For their spring 2017 installment of the limited edition Great Americans Series watches, @shinola honored the great Jackie Robinson with a full ecosystem of stories highlighting the legend and his significance in the game of baseball. Our team created content working directly with Jackie Robinson’s estate and family. The watches are sold out, and the content blew up on tumblr and Instagram. Particularly, thanks to our savvy Community Manager, the New Era caps blew up with the streetwear crowd that is highly active on all social platforms, and we were happy to be welcomed by them. 

Landing Page: Jackie Robinson Great Americans Series

The Story of Jackie Robinson

The history of the Hamtramck Fields of Detroit

The Art of Scorekeeping

gif courtesy of Parker Jackson for Giphy originals

The Three Stages of Celebrity Death

I. Rigor Mortis (Facebook posts)

When I died, I passed Prince on the way up to Purgatory. My body stopped, heart, blood and eyes, and then my soul climbed out of the deep bathtub of my petite carcass and I stood on the memories I had of legs and feet. I, now a spirit of the in-between, turned around in my bedroom, walked past my teary boyfriend Greg, took his phone and deleted the photos of us from Cancun where I had two thousand chins, and ascended the stairway that had opened itself to me on the side wall. I saw Prince on the first landing as he was maneuvering a large fog machine that was chained to his ankle.

Just a special callout to the blog post about New Era baseball caps. Though I acted as editor and content director for @shinola, every now and then I got to write and research a story on my own. As part of the Great Americans Series line honoring Jackie Robinson, we worked with the iconic New Era baseball caps to create a very special hat. I wrote the story for the blog, and got to get to know these incredible makers in upstate New York. Story below, or read here: 

In 1920, a German immigrant named Ehrhardt Koch, then 37, set out to revolutionize the headwear industry. After borrowing $1000 from his sister Rose and fellow coworker at the John Miller Cap Company, he set up shop in a back room of a Buffalo, NY building with the intent to make a Gatsby-style cap of quality, a craftsmanship so good it would never go out of style.

Ninety years later, the company is the exclusive provider of headwear to the Major Leagues and an American legend. We partnered with the company, still located in Buffalo, to create a custom 59FIFTY cap for our Great Americans Series honoring Jackie Robinson.

By 1922, Ehrhardt’s company was producing 60,000 Gatsby-style fashion caps per year. By 1932, Ehrhardt’s only child, Harold, joined the business. Harold understood what was going on in fashion at the time – the Gatsby hat was going out of style. He saw the opportunity to corner a market and leverage their respect in the industry to product baseball caps. But Harold knew to make a mark he needed baseball teams to wear the hats, not just people in the stands. The first New Era professional baseball cap was produced in 1934 for the Cleveland Indians.

During World War II, fabric was scarce, and the Kochs used their resources. They obtained uncolored fabric through a variety of innovative trades and means, dying it in the family’s home washing machine to get teams’ colors for every hat.

By 1950, New Era was the only independent cap maker supplying their goods to Major League baseball teams. Their hats were worn by the Cincinatti Reds, Brooklyn Dodgers, and the Detroit Tigers to name a few. A year after Ehrhadt’s passing in 1954, his son debuted the 49FIFTY, a redesigned fitted cap with a more contemporary look.

By the 1990s, New Era signed a deal to be the exclusive purveyor of caps to the Major Leagues, but their legacy extended off the field. In 1996, the company received a special request from filmmaker Spike Lee to make a custom New York Yankees cap in his favorite color: red. In typical New Era fashion, this began a longstanding relationship with Lee, who went on to direct the company’s first commercial in 1997.

New Era caps are unmistakable in style, but remarkable in quality. The wool cap is assembled in 22 intricate steps, all done by hand. Wool was the standard for baseball caps until 2007 with the introduction of microfiber. Their customized Shinola wool cap is an ode to an earlier time, one that defined history.

Right before Black Friday 2016, Shinola came out with something huge. In partnership with @generalelectric, @shinola launched wall clocks and electrical supplies made in America by family-owned vendors. Along with the creative agency Doubleday & Cartwright, we created these films depicting the lives of factory workers making each clock. View each story below (and shop here, it’s cool stuff): 

We’re Making Time: Meet Earl

We’re Making Time: Meet Shaneice (above)

Originally published for the Inclusive’s Short Story competition, InShort

Title: Freedom Rising

It’s been raining in New York lately. Jurassic Park rain. Backstreet Boys video rain. Small rivers flow down Broadway picking up what has not yet attached itself to the New York asphalt. The rain creates canyons in Soho and reservoirs in Gowanus. Sheets of water you can barely see through. The storms come from the east and slice through the butter-thick humidity, ruining the leather bags of anyone caught in its terror.

    Yesterday I went to the café to do some work. On the way there, the rain came again, and I ducked under a deli awning that was covering several Haitian women and their children. Soon, I grew bored of waiting for the storm to pass and went into the rain. None of the women stopped me. They knew I was stronger than the water. Stronger unless I was drinking it. I bowed my head to keep my eyes from being pecked out by those rude souls that carry umbrellas in a metropolis storm, sprinted down the street and entered the café.

    I like doing work from here. It makes me feel like I have coworkers. It’s only when I leave, or have to pay for something to stay, that I’m reminded that I don’t. I like the sounds of clicking cups and the way voices flatten when coming from heads tilted towards a raised menu.

    As I opened my laptop I saw the storm change outside. Through the window I could see the Hudson River and beyond that New Jersey, and in between us a sheet of warm and sweaty droplets. The trees lining the Battery Park City boardwalk swayed and rocked with the rain.

    We had a hurricane here once. Sam and I bought a bottle of whiskey to drink if the thunder was too loud. He leaned up against my basement wall and I rested my head in his lap while we watched to see if the basement would flood. It never did, but we drank all of the whiskey.

    In the corner of the café I saw the parents of an old friend. “How funny,” I said to them. “I haven’t seen you in years.” They explained they were visiting the new memorial. “Have you seen it?” they asked. I told them how much I loved it, the shininess of it, the largeness too. It was enormous! So tall, the tallest in the city, I told them. They looked nervous, and then ashamed. It would be days before I would realize that we were talking about two different things.

    Outside, the water of the Hudson splashed up on the deck of the Battery Park City boardwalk. A couple that had been chatting underneath the umbrella of a hot dog cart looked at each other, seemed to discuss a possible sprint, nodded and dashed out of sight and into the falling water. A girl walked on the boardwalk with her hood up and headphones in. As she passed by, the storm drew a large wave from the Hudson and it crashed onto the side of the boardwalk and onto her legs and feet. She kicked the water off of her shoe, never ceasing to move forward, and gave the raging river a dirty look.

    I saw the parents of my old friend looking frightened. “It’s fine,” I said. “We had a hurricane once and it was fine. This is nothing.” Tourists. Nothing better than a New York summer storm to scare a few tourists into never coming back and eating at our restaurants and taking up precious real estate at our cafés. Not to mention electrical outlets. I eyed the couple, who were using the nearest outlet to charge their cell phone while they called their loved ones to tell them they were in a flood and might not make it. Maybe they wouldn’t mind if I unplugged them and plugged in my laptop.

    The cups continued to click and the low murmur of music playing inside of headphones that were not around my head filled the café. I stood up and asked the nearest well-dressed person to watch my stuff while I used the washroom. As I stood, I saw in the distance as far as New Jersey that a giant tidal wave was headed for New York City. Everyone else saw it too.

    “God dammit,” said the mocha whip latte holder in the café’s only leather chair. “Are you kidding me?” said a chinless, suited young man with an obscenely stupid and shiny watch.Tchs and Pshs filled the room like they fill a stalled subway car. The wave crashed on us, and we all looked at each other and agreed with our eyes and our tchs and pshs that it was very anticlimactic. But with the knowledge that tide was rising and New York would likely be underwater soon, the New Yorkers dutifully gathered all of their things, sure not to leave even their coffee behind (it was expensive enough for that extra shot) and we parted ways to journey to our own, comfortable form of safety.

    Outside, the water was at my feet. I saw the couple of my old friend speaking on their cell phone. “We’re saying our goodbyes,” they told me.

    “Why?” I asked.

    I took their hands and we entered the Freedom Tower – which I know I’m not supposed to call it that but I’ve lived here three years and I will – and we began to walk the steps.

    “Tired?” I asked from the top of floor 47. “Not really,” they said, but I raced ahead, boasting the gluteal muscles only a seasoned subway stair-walker would have. We reached the top and I shuddered at the sight of the construction cranes swaying in the wind. What a long way to fall, I thought. But when I looked down at the rising water that had already drowned the café, the Ritz Carlton, and most of the Gehry building, it wasn’t a very far at all anymore.

    The rain had stopped but the water was still rising. After an hour I realized I had left my laptop inside the café and thought about swimming down to get it. I still think about it down there, containing all of my notes and my photos. Everything. Regardless of how unsafe it would be to swim and risk getting hit by some sort of floating taxi, biker, or unruly umbrella, I knew I at least had a movie saved on that computer to entertain myself. Anything would be better than watching this water rise.

    The water swallowed each of the island’s buildings; tip by tip their spires disappeared beneath the calm water. At one point all of the car alarms went off at once, and quite quickly they drowned into a mermaid’s song.

    “Where is the military?” asked the couple of my old friend. This seemed odd, and irrelevant, but I became annoyed for not being able to answer their tourist question. “I don’t know,” I said. I couldn’t recall there being any Army, Navy or Marine officials walking the streets of New York any time except during Fleet Week. And it was not Fleet Week.

    For whatever reason, no one but us had thought to climb to the top of a building to avoid the water. Occasionally, we would see someone swim toward us with their briefcase over their head, and when we offered them a dry spot to rest they said “No thank you, I’m going to swim until I find dry land or Long Island or something.” I believe this worked out for them because they knew the way. I’d never been to Long Island and still had no desire to see it.

    After two more hours of waiting, tch-ing and psh-ing, watching approximately 20 people treading water using their baby strollers as floating devices, an airplane with a Native American man’s face painted on the tail floated toward us. The window of the cockpit was flung open and the pilots, clearly not from here, beckoned us toward them. “We’re doing this the New York way!” said the friendly pilots who had decided that swimming in dirty water was the New York way. The couple of my old friend lowered themselves into the water, now on floor 120, and swam toward the plane. It occurred to me then; where was Sam?

    My heart sunk to the bottom of the island. I hadn’t felt so worried than when I remembered I’d left my laptop in the café. “Sam!” I screamed, but he could be anywhere. He could be swimming with the bike I gave him after I stole it from my old PR job. He could be safe inside the UN, though I don’t think he knows what or where the UN is. He could be on top of his office building in midtown. Oh god, where is that again? I spun around frantically to face North, and when I looked uptown I realized there was only one building whose spine was not becoming coral below us.

    I asked the pilots to wait while I searched for a phone. Phones don’t work in disasters! I thought. But there was one right there, pink and labeled “Foreman” and stuck with the lint of construction worker’s gloves. I dialed Sam.

    “Hello?” he said calmly into his cell phone. “Sam!” I said. “New York has been flooded! Where are you?” A crack of static bored through our conversation. I thought I’d lost him.

    “Look across the water,” he said. “I’m here.” I faced north again. There he was, standing at the top of the Empire State Building – the top you can’t get to unless you’re a janitor – waving at me. Without all those streets we were so much closer together.

    “Sam,” I said. “Why did we survive?” I began to cry. I cried for my laptop, for the High Line, for 5pointz, for the Brooklyn Museum, for Katz’ Deli which I always said I hated but it was just because I over-ate there once and threw up in the bathroom of a gelato place after, for commercials in cabs, for saxophones in the park, and for the cowardly deed of running up to the top of Freedom Tower which I know I’m not supposed to call Freedom Tower instead of saving the town that adopted me. Why did we survive when we’ve only lived here such a short time, when we don’t even belong here?