Threadless · Copywriting & Campaigns
Threadless at 25
One 25-year story, told well across every channel it touched.
Role Editorial ownership across the campaign
The challenge
A quarter-century is a lot of story, and anniversaries curdle fast into self-congratulation. The campaign needed to feel like a celebration the community would actually care about — specific, warm, and true to the brand — while holding together across the blog, landing pages, email, the homepage, artist communications, and a press release.
Context & audience
Threadless is an art community as much as a store, so the 25-year story had to speak to artists and longtime fans, not just shoppers. The overall campaign was planned collaboratively across the Brand Team; I owned the editorial and storytelling side of it.
The approach
I started with research, because the good material was in the history: old company materials, press, the 10th-anniversary book, and conversations with longtime employees and the founder. From there I built an editorial schedule that spaced the story out as a series of moments — iconic designs, the founder's memories, the people who'd been there — rather than one big look-how-great-we-are post. The throughline was consistency: the same voice and the same story, adjusted for each channel.
The execution
I developed the anniversary blog schedule and researched the company history behind it, wrote and edited all of the landing-page copy, and built the historical timeline by researching and adding milestones. I wrote the press release from scratch, including the first draft of the founder's quote, which he then refined and approved. And I carried the anniversary message outward — into email, homepage copy, artist communications, related Design Challenges, and social support — so one story stayed coherent everywhere it appeared.
This is the kind of project where the writing is the smallest visible part of the job. Most of the work is deciding what the story is, where it should live, and how it should change — a little — as it moves from a press release to an email to a line on the homepage.