Levi’s latest campaign, a splashy endeavor headlined by Beyoncé, is called “Reiimagine” for a reason. Spelled with two i’s in a nod to the singer’s “Levii’s Jeans” song, the campaign is reimagining history by recreating the brand’s iconic 1985 “Launderette” ad by replacing British singer Nick Kamen with Beyoncé. But no imagining would have been possible without the help of Tracey Panek, the Levi Strauss & Co. historian who mined the denim brand’s archives for the new commercial, the first of a four-part series remaking Levi’s most memorable ads.

“We looked at the earlier ads we’ve done—not just TV but print,” said Panek, noting that Levi’s wanted to have a sense of its past aesthetic particularly related to Beyoncé’s country album. “We were looking at what our country and western ads looked like; from the ’30s to the ’60s, the cowboy was our chief marketing symbol and having that connection and understanding the background was key to this campaign.”

As consumers hunger for new and engaging social media content and nostalgia-infused campaigns, chief marketing officers are increasingly turning to such archivists for relics from the past to help propel the company forward—whether in marketing campaigns, social media, or product design. While many companies with heritage brands, such as Ford Motor Co., Coca-Cola Co. and Levi’s, have had brand historians on the payroll for decades, in recent years there has been a renewed interest in preserving a brand’s history as it becomes digitized and accessible by both employees and customers. Companies including Coach, Tiffany, McDonald’s and John Deere all employ historians; some, such as Delta, Walmart and Procter & Gamble, run brand museums open to the public.

“There’s this stereotype of archivists that you’re in a quiet, secluded place behind the scenes doing academic research—no, it’s incredibly busy and active and it’s supposed to be,” said Marie Force, director of archives at Delta Air Lines, who joined the airline in 1998. “We’re this hub of connections between Delta employees, Delta brand folks, the aviation community and customers.”

Several brands bolster their internal offerings with external support; for example, Heritage Werks, a 15-year-old organization, works with hundreds of brands, including Levi’s, Coty and the NFL, on research and maintaining their archives. In recent years, much of the group’s remit has expanded as companies recognize the value in their history.

“We are seeing an increased need from companies looking for authentic engagements,” said Bridget Reddick, VP of content and creative at Heritage Werks, noting that several requests also involve how a brand can tell its history to its own employees. “That engagement drives a lot of our business and what we’re seeing from clients across the board.”

Diverse roots

Typically, brand historians have a background rooted in history and library science, but that’s not always the case. Scott Reames, who became Nike’s first historian in 2005 and developed and led the sneaker giant’s Department of Nike Archives (DNA) until his retirement three years ago, was previously a journalism major and senior spokesman for Nike. While the role can sit within the communications or product design departments, it is increasingly linked to marketing. When Panek began at Levi’s in 2014, she was hired into the communications team; around five years ago, she moved into marketing to better assist with value and context for social campaigns, she said. Historians are often tapped to interact with fans from a brand storytelling perspective.

“It’s taken on a more public face since I got here—launching the [Ford Heritage] Vault, taking material public, doing exhibits, bringing the archives to life for the brand teams,” said Ted Ryan, who joined Ford in 2018 as heritage brand manager and archivist after working for more than two decades in a similar role at Coca-Cola Co. Despite the interest and the continuing popularity of nostalgia marketing, Ryan cautions against using the sentimental term.

“I teach my staff never to use the word nostalgia—that’s your grandmother’s Buick, it’s not cool it’s not relevant,” he said. “We use the word ‘retro.’”

Ryan’s mission at 121-year-old Ford is to “trust in Ford’s ability to lead in the future because of what we’ve learned about the past,” he said.

Ford CEO Jim Farley, who is known as a history buff, is especially inspired by the past. On a quarterly basis, Ryan and his six-person team put together a themed exhibit in Farley’s office that showcases documents and objects from Ford’s archives.

Previous themes include NASCAR and rally racing as well as Lincoln’s 100th anniversary. The current exhibit pays homage to the Stroppe Baja Bronco from the ’60s and ’70s, timed to coincide with the introduction of the new Bronco Stroppe Special Edition.

Farley, a former marketer, regularly posts about such history on X.

“He’s a huge Ford fan and an automotive history fan, and he finds the content intellectually stimulating,” said Ryan. Farley’s curated exhibits are often repurposed in other places later on. His interest has also paved the way for more integration of history into Ford’s marketing.

The Ford Heritage Vault has been public-facing with free and downloadable images and brochures since 2022. Average monthly searches on the archive have soared from 80,000 in its early days to 1.2 million today. Ford's archives, which are based at the automaker's Dearborn, Michigan headquarters, are private and only used for business purposes. They include 3 miles of shelving and some 16,000 cubic feet of documents, along with more than 3 million photo negatives and videos.

For example, a brand team might visit the archives to learn about different nameplates, or a designer might study original seating color schemes. The inclusion of goats in a 2021 campaign for the Ford Bronco Sport comes from the model’s “G.O.A.T. modes,” which stands for “Goes Over Any Type of Terrain,” a military phrase plucked straight from Ford’s 1966 Bronco archives.

Ryan’s team often shares such tidbits with Ford’s agency Wieden+Kennedy, which includes them in social media posts on a monthly basis.

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Social media’s influence

At an annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists in Chicago in August, social media was the unofficial topic du jour. Many of the nearly 2,000 individuals who attended the gathering spoke about the uptick in demand from brand leaders to find archival content to feed posts on X, TikTok and YouTube. Overall, the SAA has a membership of 5,500, a figure that has remained consistent in recent years, the group said. In a survey last year, 81% of archives administrators said that skills related to technology are the most important to the staff in their department in the coming years.

“There is pressure on the archivists to mine their collections for content that can be given to social,” said Ryan, who affectionally refers to the annual meeting as a “gaggle of geeks.” 

When Nike first started DNA, much of the remit was sharing stories of brand history internally with designers and other employees so they could immerse themselves in the sportswear giant’s rich history of product innovation and athlete relationships, according to Reames. Then, in the early 2020s, there was a philosophical push to be more external-facing, he said, noting examples such as posting on Instagram to speak more directly to consumers about Nike’s heritage.

“There’s a very passionate fan base—they call themselves ‘sneakerheads’—and they are fascinated by our brand, the storytelling and products we’ve created,” Reames said.

Since retirement, he has posted periodically on LinkedIn; sometimes he corrects misperceptions about the origins of Nike’s swoosh logo, for example. He posted about the liberties taken in last year’s “Air,” the movie about Nike’s Air Jordans—and attracted nearly 2,000 reactions and more than 100 comments. Reames pointed to Nike’s “Footballverse” spot for the 2022 World Cup, which contains Easter eggs of older Nike ads, as an example of how the brand has incorporated archival materials into current marketing.

“You’re giving a wink and a nod to your more passionate fan base,” Reames said. “It’s still relevant and if you don’t know you still like it, but if you know you know.”

In the spring, Nike laid off a portion of its archives department, which is closed to the public and responsible for more than 2,000 Nike historical artifacts, according to Bloomberg. The sportswear brand has struggled to find its footing against newer, more nimble competitors in recent months. A Nike spokesman did not respond to an interview request about the brand’s current archives operation.

Levi’s digital storytelling

Since Levi’s Panek transitioned to the marketing team, she has vastly expanded the San Francisco-based brand’s social media output by lending a historical context. She launched and hosts “From the Levi’s Archives,” a YouTube series that chronicles individual customer stories throughout the brand’s 171-year history as well as Levi’s role in historical movements. One recent episode depicts the finding of a pair of Levi’s in the insulation of an 1800s cabin owned by a member of a Native American tribe.

Roughly two years ago, Panek debuted a similar series on TikTok, the hardest part of which was telling stories in under a minute, she said. The TikTok posts came into play quite a bit for the marketing of the 501 jeans’ 150th anniversary last year.

“The stories are great —you can’t make them up and social media in many ways gave us the platform to tell them,” she said. “Part of my goal is to be able to identify and tell those stories and make sure we recognize those moments.”

Some of an archivist’s role is around adding authenticity to marketing claims. Heritage Werks, which employs around 100 full-time employees and houses its main facility in Atlanta, has received a lot of requests from clients who are looking to bolster statements with examples. The company is currently working with research teams at Georgia Tech to develop AI-based technologies to improve the use of archival content to better inform brands.

“All the time many clients will say, ‘We want to hear examples of how we’ve been innovative because our claim today is we’re so innovative and we need those proof points,’” said Reddick.  

She said that Heritage Werks is also seeing increased demand from brands that are trying to tell their history and brand stories internally to employees. Such stories help foster bonds between staffers and the companies, as the employees understand more of what came before them, said experts.

The Delta Flight Museum, which first opened its doors in 1995, comprises two airplane hangers and houses nine historic planes. The site maintains exhibits showcasing travel innovations throughout the airline’s 10 decades of history. The Atlanta museum’s three-person staff works heavily with the five-person team in the archives department. While the museum is designed for the public, a lot of the work is also done for Delta’s employees, according to Nina Thomas, director of exhibits and public programs, who has tripled her staff since she joined last year.

“With every exhibit we design, we are cognizant that it is for the public but also that it is for employees,” she said, noting that employee meetings and parties are often held at the museum. “We have a lot of new hires but they don’t necessarily know the 100-year history so they come in and see the aircrafts and it connects them in a deeper way to where they’re working.”

Thomas and Force, the director of archives, are currently preparing for Delta’s centennial celebrations next year. The museum’s exhibits will focus on storytelling archival pieces.

Levi’s has also been focusing on its museum, which is currently closed for renovations. The site, which is located at the base of Telegraph Hill near the San Francisco waterfront where Founder Levi Strauss first arrived, will triple in size when it reopens next spring.

“We are literally making it larger to give us more space to exhibit things from the collection and tell our stories,” said Panek.