GentleForces creates Shinola's first-ever brand campaign starring and co-directed by Nicholas Braun

Independent creative practice GentleForces creates a brand campaign for Detroit lifestyle brand Shinola, which stars and marks the directorial debut of Succession actor Nicholas Braun.

It was created alongside GentleForces' creative practice lead Quba Tuakli, who wrote and co-directed the film.

The cinematic campaign reintroduces Shinola's iconic Runwell watch through a broader cultural idea, challenging the pressure to move faster and instead encouraging people to define success on their own terms. It’s also the first campaign in the company's history to focus not on a product, but on our relationship with time.

The campaign represents a significant shift for Shinola, the Detroit-based design brand best known for helping revive American watchmaking after opening the country's first industrial-scale watch factory in almost 50 years. While the Runwell remains the centrepiece of the campaign, the creative moves beyond traditional product advertising to explore what the brand believes luxury means today: owning your own time.

The work also marks the first major campaign under creative director Jonathan Bailey, signalling a new creative direction for the business.

Rather than creating a conventional watch commercial, GentleForces developed a cinematic short film that deliberately plays with audience expectations. Set in a bustling restaurant, Nicholas Braun appears to be ending a difficult relationship, telling his unseen companion: “No more of your rules. I'm in charge.”

As the restaurant around him blurs in fast-forward and the relentless ticking of a watch grows louder, the camera finally pulls back to reveal he isn't talking to a partner at all, but to his watch and to time itself. Braun resets the watch, smiles and concludes: ‘That wasn't a breakup. It was an important conversation,’ before kissing the watch as the campaign's closing line, Set the Pace, appears on screen.

For independent interdisciplinary creative practice GentleForces, headquartered in Bermondsey, London, the campaign marks another milestone in its growing international portfolio and its continued expansion into the US market. The practice has been appointed as Shinola's lead strategic and creative partner, helping to reposition the brand from one primarily centred on craftsmanship to one that leads a wider cultural conversation around intentional living, confidence and the value of time. The project reflects GentleForces' philosophy of combining strategy, creativity and design to help established brands reinvent themselves for contemporary audiences.

Danni Mohammed, founder of GentleForces, said: “Shinola is a brand with real substance, built on craft, patience, and an idea of time that feels almost countercultural today. That's exactly the kind of story we want to tell. This campaign wasn't about making a beautiful watch look beautiful. It was about capturing what it feels like to actually notice time passing, and choosing to spend it well. Bringing that to the U.S. market with a brand as iconic as Shinola, on our fifth anniversary, is exactly the kind of work we set out to do when we started GentleForces.”

The campaign represents a strategic evolution for Shinola, which is expanding the conversation from what it makes to what those objects make possible: confidence, presence, and a more intentional relationship with time. “The Runwell helped introduce Shinola to the world,” said Jonathan Bailey, creative director at Shinola. “As we looked toward the future, it felt right to begin by revisiting the watch that started everything, but through a completely new lens. This campaign isn't really about a watch. It's about our relationship with time. In a world that's constantly telling us to go faster, we're interested in the opposite question: what happens when you choose your own pace? That's what the Runwell represents for us today."