686
Transforming a snow legacy into a year-round outdoor brand through systems, storytelling, and scale.
As Creative Director at 686, I led the strategic repositioning of the brand from a snow-focused outerwear label into a year-round outdoor apparel company—aligning brand, product, and digital storytelling under a single creative vision.
This work spans brand strategy, women’s product systems and brand alignment, campaign direction, and creative infrastructure—designed to build long-term relevance while delivering measurable business results.
The Brand Shift:
From Outerwear to Outdoor
686 built its reputation on technical snow outerwear. But as the brand grew, its opportunity expanded beyond winter, into a broader outdoor lifestyle that required clarity, consistency, and a more cohesive creative system.
The challenge was not just seasonal expansion, but alignment. This moment required a shift from fragmented execution to a unified creative framework.
I established an outdoor-first creative framework designed to unify how the brand shows up across product, campaign, and commerce.
Rather than producing more content, the focus shifted to fewer, stronger ideas—executed consistently and intentionally across touchpoints. This system created clarity without limiting expression, allowing each campaign, product story, and channel to feel distinct while remaining unmistakably 686.
Women’s
Strategy
The women’s initiative began without a defined directive—only a shared recognition that something was missing in the women’s category. I shaped a long-term, system-led approach, grounded in research, alignment, and clear creative execution across product and brand. By organizing the work from the top down, the framework created clarity that could scale intentionally.
Building a Cohesive System
Through research, collaboration, and close analysis of how women actually use the product, a clearer strategy emerged—one that organized fit, silhouette, and storytelling into a cohesive system rather than isolated categories.
We reshaped the women’s product strategy:
Defining fit language within 686 system
Clarifying and strategizing silhouettes
Solving long-standing customer issues
Creating storytelling frameworks that reflect how women actually move, ride, and live
Outline: Becoming a Modern Women’s Icon
The Outline campaign emerged from this strategic foundation—designed to deliver technical credibility, modern silhouette, and strong storytelling alignment with 686 athletes.
Through campaign execution, the Outline pant was positioned as both a product and a narrative anchor within the women’s line.
The result:
Strong performance across channels
Increased confidence from leadership and merchants
A doubled order for the upcoming 26/27 season
Outline continues to scale as a core expression of the women’s strategy.
Rather than creating more content, the focus was on fewer, stronger ideas; we slowed down in order to execute consistently and intentionally across touchpoints.
This system became the foundation for:
Seasonal campaigns
Product storytelling
B2B and DTC touchpoints
Long-term brand alignment
Fewer ideas.
Stronger execution.
Built on the same system of fewer, stronger ideas, I helped establish 686’s performance marketing program from the ground up—developing brand-forward creative designed to perform against core KPIs and deliver strong ROAS.
Creative decisions were guided by data, balancing performance needs with emotionally grounded brand storytelling.