Uncle Bill makes custom headwear for outdoor and lifestyle brands out of San Clemente, California. In 2026 it launched two hat brands of its own, made exclusively for Target: Rustero and Elmat's, 15 styles between them, on shelves nationwide from October 18. Mutual Friends came in six weeks before launch to build the brands, launch their social and run the paid media that would send shoppers to Target.
Uncle Bill designed the logos and the hats. We built everything around them: a positioning, point of view, tone of voice and content direction for each brand, plus a one-page visual guide for colour, type and photography. Rustero is a modern take on the American West, all old trucks, ranches and big skies. Elmat's is for getting out there: lakes, cabins and early mornings on the water. Same shelf, two different worlds.
Both Instagram accounts went live in early October with a feed built from Uncle Bill's lifestyle photography and our graphics, from bumper stickers and patches to a matchbook and a launch poster. We planned the paid media across Meta and Roundel, Target's retail media network, designed every ad to Target's co-marketing rules and got each round approved, and seeded hats with creators who shot them in Target stores.
In launch week the ads reached 132K people on Instagram, earned 729K paid impressions across Meta and Target.com, and sent nearly 10,000 shoppers to the brands' Target product pages, with Rustero's ads holding a 6.5% click-through rate. In week two, sales at Target more than doubled, and the Mustang Mile, the hat in our best-performing Rustero ad, became the top seller.
