How Overtime Turned Millions of Fans Into a Creator Engine with Refunnel

Overtime is a US-based sports media and lifestyle brand founded in late 2016, with a primary office in New York. Initially recognized for its sports media platform, the company has evolved to encompass a thriving lifestyle and merchandise division launched around 2021–2022.

‍

Overtime specializes in apparel and merchandise designed to connect popular culture with a predominantly Gen Z and Gen Alpha audience.

‍

Overtime believes that content creators are essential to the brand's success: user-generated content not only drives brand affinity but also provides crucial insights for product development and marketing.

‍

Creators are often fans first, some becoming influential partners or even representing Overtime at key events. The brand strives to cultivate authentic relationships with creators, prioritizing those who passionately engage with their products over paid-for-hire promoters.

‍

We spoke directly with Cam, who leads Overtime's lifestyle and merchandise division, to uncover how Overtime leverages community-driven content and manages creator collaboration, product development, and brand storytelling at scale.

‍

Before Refunnel:

‍

Before using Refunnel, Cam and the Overtime team managed their influencer and content operations in a highly manual, unstructured way. There was no centralized platform for social listening, UGC collection, or creator relationship management.

‍

• Manual and sporadic rights management: Requesting usage rights for UGC was "very sporadic", Cam would only ask for permission on a case-by-case basis, if he happened to think about it. There was no official or standardized process, and Overtime frequently faced situations where they were reposting things without getting all the correct approvals, sometimes running into legal trouble.

‍

• Overwhelmed by notifications and scattered communication: With huge Instagram and TikTok followings, Overtime's inboxes were overwhelmed. It was anxiety-inducing for Cam to open Instagram DMs due to the sheer volume of random tags and messages, from spam to genuine brand fans. The team constantly lost track of who was tagging or mentioning them, with no organized way to monitor who was submitting high-quality content.

‍

• No centralized data or organized UGC collection: All UGC and creator interactions were tracked manually. There was no single place to see what people were saying or how they were posting. Vital signals (like the trend of creators personalizing sweatpants, or standout repeat creators) were difficult to detect, and repurposing content for ads required tedious manual searches.

‍

• Limited historical insights: Like many brands, Overtime was limited by platform-native tools: TikTok and Instagram only allowed 90 days of lookback, making it impossible to access older UGC, monitor long-term creator relationships, or analyze trends over time.

‍

• Fragmented tool use, no unified system: While Overtime occasionally used social media management platforms like Sprout and automated DM tools like Drop, these covered narrow functions and did not provide a holistic view of UGC, rights management, or creator engagement. There was no end-to-end dashboard to surface top fans, measure total UGC output, or automate routine creator workflows.

‍

• Creator sampling and outreach was unsystematic: The approach to finding and activating creators was ad hoc "hand-to-hand combat" in the DMs, based on whoever Cam happened to notice. There was no process for identifying top fans or tracking how many times a creator posted. As a result, outreach, product gifting, and creator relationships were fragmented and lacked clear documentation or follow-up.

‍

6 Ways Overtime Uses Refunnel

‍

• Content library & social listening: Overtime uses Refunnel as an always-on archive of every tag, mention, and piece of UGC across TikTok and Instagram, including posts where Overtime isn't directly tagged but the logo appears. This lets them easily scan, organize, and discover who's repping their gear, even when DMs and notifications are overwhelming.

• Community repurposing and UGC amplification: The team sorts and downloads the highest-quality UGC to fuel their own channels, whether for paid ads, whitelisted posts, weekly social updates, or to showcase real fans on their website and emails. Refunnel makes it frictionless to find, repurpose, and highlight how the community is wearing and styling Overtime products in the wild.

‍

• Rights management & whitelisting: After getting "slapped on the wrist" for reposting content without explicit permission, Overtime now standardizes usage rights requests through Refunnel. The platform's built-in tool streamlines outreach to creators ensuring legal compliance and a smoother workflow.

• Creator & fan relationship building: By surfacing the most active and loyal fans (like a 8th grader tagging them daily), Overtime can track engagement over time, send special care packages, and turn authentic brand fans into long-term content partners or collaborators. Refunnel helps them build deeper, more genuine community ties.

‍

• Data-driven product decisions: Refunnel reveals organic trends like seeing customers cut sweatpants into capris, or creators styling products together in unexpected ways. Overtime uses these real-world insights as signals to develop new SKUs, tweak campaigns, and inform future product launches.

‍

‍

• Performance tracking & content sharing: The share page and historical analytics features let the team filter UGC by campaign (like Pokémon or Naruto collabs), track reach and creator frequency, and send visual content summaries to meetings or management. Unlike native social tools with limited lookback, Refunnel provides a long-term record of what's working.

‍

The Results

‍

Before Refunnel:

• Manual social listening, sporadic rights management
  ‍
• Missed tags and lost notifications due to overwhelming volume
  ‍
• No centralized system for UGC tracking or usage rights

‍

After Refunnel:

• All UGC, tags, and mentions organized in one place, easy to review and repurpose
  ‍
• 100% increase in content repurposing efficiency: faster rights requests, high-quality assets instantly ready for ads and social
  ‍
• Creator tracking became effortless, quickly identifying top-performing fans and authentic brand advocates
  ‍
• Dramatic reduction in missed opportunities and DMs lost in the noise

‍

Creator Engagement Efficiency:

• Previously: hand-to-hand outreach, tracking via DMs, difficult to identify true fans
  ‍
• With Refunnel: able to collect, review, and categorize all tagged and untagged community content in one place, enabling deeper relationships and surprise-and-delight moments (like sending care packages to highly-engaged young creators)
  ‍

What this means:

• Community engagement is up: Overtime found and elevated their best creators, building real relationships and even discovering future ambassadors
  ‍
• Repurposed UGC now drives high-performing posts and informs new product decisions (e.g., new products inspired directly by how real fans style and modify pieces)
  ‍
• The brand is now data-driven: Refunnel surfaced actionable product insights and ensured all content usage is fully rights-cleared
  ‍
• A night-and-day improvement: Instead of anxiety and overwhelm over missed content, Cam reports the team now has complete visibility, faster workflows, and a vibrant, empowered creator community fueling Overtime's growth

‍