Shinola’s New Creative Director Is Leaning Into “American Cool”

By Karen Dybis | October 27, 2026

In his first year at Detroit-based Shinola, creative director Jonathan Bailey has done some…well, honestly, weird things. He partnered with Cheerios. He made a duck the star of the brand’s latest advertising campaign.

He put Succession’s Nicholas Braun in the director’s seat, partnering him with Quba Tuakli in a mini psychological thriller of sorts where Braun appears to break up with an unknown partner. Only at the end of the ad does the viewer realize he’s talking about anxiety and time with a Shinola Runwell watch.

These two campaigns for the Shinola Duck and the Runwell have something in common—both speak to the kind of branding Bailey wants to establish at Shinola. They are sticky. They are hugely popular on social media. And they set the tone for a uniquely American perspective on timepieces—something Bailey says he wants Shinola to lean into during his tenure with the company.

United Kingdom–born Bailey joined Shinola in September 2025 after roles as an executive at Coach and Tiffany & Co. These experiences—working with an American leather-goods giant and the oldest U.S. jewelry house—made Bailey the ideal candidate for Shinola, which sells watches, fine jewelry, leather products, and home goods.

Shinola time campaign — *A scene from Shinola’s time-themed campaign starring* Succession actor Nicholas Braun

Bailey says when he saw the job posting for a leather-and-watch company in Detroit, he hoped it was Shinola. Bailey says he had his eye on the brand since the company popped up in Detroit, one of its first surprising moves. Who puts a watch brand in the Motor City, after all?

“I remember when it launched, I was at Tiffany and I was like, ‘What is this brand? It’s so fresh.’ Is it a new brand or an old brand? Is it a heritage brand? It felt like it’d been around for so long and I think that’s really important,” Bailey recalls.

“I think it’s an important brand not just because of the products it makes, but for being in the city of Detroit as well,” he says. “It was my first time coming to Detroit since living in the States for a job. And I had always wanted to go there. I grew up listening to Motown. We all drive Ford cars. So being in a city that has all of this innovation and creativity coming out of it—it should be on a pedestal for this country.”

It is this Detroit spirit and U.S. story that Shinola needs to lean into, believes Bailey.

“It shouldn’t follow any other watch company, in my opinion. It’s something that’s uniquely American. So it shouldn’t be like a luxury European watch brand,” he explains. “What I mean by that is the status signaling of other watch brands. My thought on it was let’s go the opposite way. It’s about that American ease. One of my bosses used to say to me, ‘The French are chic. But New York City invented the cool.’ So, it’s that American cool factor.”

Shinola duck campaign — *The October 2026 Shinola Duck campaign worked with Tefi Pessoa (cohost of* Love Island USA: Aftersun), and Kareem Rahma, creator and host of Subway Takes.

Bailey also wanted to dig deeply into the concept of time—the human side of how we are affected by it. Shinola had focused its advertising on its Detroit-ness, its factory, and its employees. But time? That’s something everyone experiences.

“We’re in a world that’s forever changing. We’re being optimized. AI is coming. In doing analog brands, I wanted to have a real emotional connection to the consumer,” Bailey says. “We’ve gone a little bit of a step further in deeper and deeper storytelling by bringing these human insights in, such as owning your own time with the Nicholas campaign, setting your pace, and having that kind of authorship of yourself.”

The Duck campaign took that same idea but moved it from anxiety into humor. Sophisticated humor, Bailey notes, not slapstick. It’s about playfulness, something the Duck has stood for within Shinola’s watches. Add in some big personalities like Tefi Pessoa and Kareem Rahma, and you have the making for a memorable ad campaign.

“It’s a version of a campaign where I think it offsets us doing something serious in Detroit with a bit of a human layer there. I think watches can be so serious that you have fun with some things and have a laugh sometimes,” he adds.

Bailey says his job at Shinola is to direct its larger brand voice—something he has been working on for the past year and will rev up fully by 2028.

“What that’s looking like is I’m trying to get involved in the product storytelling, how to make it a cohesive story for the year, rather than telling singular stories on different products and trying to patch it together,” Bailey says. “I think 2028 will be a year where that really, truly comes to life, where everyone’s on the same page. We’re also designing some new, fresh product under this new umbrella and purpose of making time feel meaningful.”

Top: Nicholas Braun starred in and codirected Shinola’s new time-focused campaign, conceived by its new creative director, Jonathan Bailey. (Photos courtesy of Shinola)