Dad hat brand ’47 goes global with a new marketing campaign, ‘Worn Worldwide’
When it comes to marketing, Boston-based baseball cap brand ’47 is increasingly venturing outside of North America.
This week, ’47 launched a global campaign called “Worn Worldwide” that highlights the international popularity of one of its biggest hat models, the Clean Up. The brand taped five different “vignettes” to show how people, from artists to fishermen, are wearing ’47 hats abroad. The “vignettes” are airing on social media, one day at a time, from April 13-17. ’47 filmed the content in five countries: Scotland, the U.S., Mexico, France and Italy. The campaign is being shared by ’47’s international offshoots, including ’47 Europe, ’47 Mexico, ’47 Japan and ’47 Australia & New Zealand.
The new campaign builds on a campaign ’47 ran last fall, in which it proclaimed itself “The Father of All Dad Hats.” ’47 is a nearly 80-year-old company, and it’s known for its licensing partnerships with the NFL, MLB, WNBA, NHL and hundreds of colleges. However, over the years, ’47 has faced more competition as companies like Nike, Fanatics, Favorite Daughter and Rowing Blazers boosted their own headwear offerings. With its recent marketing efforts, ’47 is looking to “reclaim [its] position in the marketplace” and be more explicit about its value proposition, said Patrick Cassidy, ’47’s vp of marketing.
Both of ’47’s recent campaigns highlight the Clean Up, a more relaxed model that debuted in the 1990s. ’47 has sold 150 million Clean Up caps around the world, and the product has found a dedicated following among everyone from baseball fans to the pope. “It’s a premium product that everybody has access to,” Cassidy said. “This is a model that transcends race, age, gender, occupation and geography. And we want to show that, with this second leg of the campaign.”
It took “a lot of hustle on the ground” to find the right folks to feature in the campaign, Cassidy said. The subject of the “Worn in Scotland” video is a shepherd who wears a Boston Red Sox hat when tending to his horses and sheep. The subject of the “Worn in France” video is a visual artist who wears a Los Angeles Dodgers hat when painting in her studio. The subject of the “Worn in Mexico” video is a chess player who wears a Detroit Tigers hat when rushing to make a game in the park. “The thing that remains the same is that the Clean Up is their go-to,” Cassidy said.
’47 will track whether “Worn Worldwide” drives increased brand awareness and conversions. Its earlier “Father of All Dad Hats” campaign saw “an excellent uptick” in both of those factors, Cassidy said. “That led us to say, ‘We are absolutely going to do this second leg,'” he said. This time around, though, ’47 shot its content outdoors, as opposed to within a studio.
The “Worn Worldwide” campaign is going live on several different channels, from TikTok to YouTube to Instagram. Out-of-home advertising is a big focus, too, as it was for the “Father of All Dad Hats” campaign, when the brand ran billboards. This time around, ’47 is projecting footage from the campaign onto the sides of buildings in New York City, Los Angeles and Boston. The videos will run at night, on key weekends, “for the foreseeable future,” Cassidy said. The first round goes live from April 16-18, for at least five hours a night.
An overnight projection was “specifically fitting for our campaign anthem content, because it’s cinematic and tells a story,” Cassidy said. “It’s an opportunity to grab people’s attention, outside of traditional, out-of-home advertising. … This brand has been building for eight decades, and we’re aggressively moving into the future with some innovative [tactics] that may surprise people.”
’47’s new global campaign also comes as the brand tries to build its sales outside of the United States. North America remains ’47’s biggest market, but the company has a growing number of retail partners in Japan, Latin America and Mexico. “More [are] planned to come online this year,” Cassidy said.
Daniel-Yaw Miller, a sports and fashion journalist and writer of the “SportsVerse” Substack, told Modern Retail that there’s ample potential for brands like ’47 abroad. That’s especially true, he said, as American sports culture spreads across borders and as U.S. leagues play more games internationally. “Every time the NFL has a game in London or the MLB does an international game, it’s huge,” he said.
Miller used to live in London and said he’s seen a “noticeable difference” in the number of people walking around, wearing hats of U.S. teams. “People really want to be involved in American sports,” he said. “Headwear is central to that, in the same way soccer jerseys are in Europe. … There’s a big growth opportunity in bringing American-style sports merch to the rest of the world. And it’s already bootlegged and copied so much that the original brands might as well do it themselves.”
’47, for its part, wants to be a leader in that sports culture and conversation for many more decades, Cassidy said. “We made a decision months ago to be more overt in our marketing and messaging about what our brand is, what it stands for and what makes us different from other players in the space,” he said. “We are not a fast-fashion brand, and we’ve spent time perfecting the craft of how we make our product.”