“Come As You Are,” encouraging everyone to be comfortable in their own shoes, is the mantra guiding Crocs’ transformation from polarizing shoe to must-have fashion, and it was fueled by a social marketing strategy as unique as the clogs themselves.
Crocs Objectives:
People loved (or hated) the classic clog. Crocs wanted to lean into these emotions, embracing and activating the brand’s fans, resulting in “Come As You Are,” a global campaign and rallying cry for the lovers and an invitation to reconsider for the haters. By focusing on the classic clog, Crocs wanted to rediscover its voice and the voice of its fans to build brand momentum and create a culture where everyone is “comfortable in their own shoes.”
Crocs listened to its largely millennial and GenZ fans base - dubbed “CrocNation” - and activated them to create content that increased Croc’s footprint in the digital space, driving brand relevance in the most authentic way possible.
In addition, Crocs created fresh and engaging in-house content and also partnered with influencers and social content creators for Social Native user-generated content.
Crocs’ goal was three-fold: 1) Decrease the briefing-to-concept execution timeline for user-generated content to authentically capture fans reactions and love for the brand 2) Build a strong library of authentic, high-quality content at scale, at low costs, and 3) Connect with young, tech-savvy consumers through creative, authentic storytelling that resonated with their target consumer.
In order to source and create authentic user-generated content, Crocs partnered with Social Native, a social content platform that connects brands with creators to produce high-quality user-generated content at scale and on-demand. The versatility of Social Native’s platform allowed Crocs to strategize, build, and execute a variety of high-impact user-generated photo and video campaigns.
Step 1: Activate user-generated content
Crocs worked with Social Native to create every form of user-generated content including images, videos, edited content, high production videos, and 360 videos. By empowering real fans to create user-generated content, Crocs built a social media presence defined by authentic and creative storytelling that truly resonates with their growing diverse, global audience who continue to transform the brand’s essence, cultural relevance, and “cool factor”.
Step 2: Repurpose user-generated content across brand channels
Crocs repurposed the highest performing user-generated content to fuel their organic social media channels. By leveraging real content created by real users, Crocs empowered consumers to tell their stories, share their experiences, and build the brand from the core out through official brand channels.
Step 3: Amplify user-generated content with paid media
Based on the top performers for organic social, Crocs leveraged the user-generated content across their paid social channels including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and TikTok. Through testing and optimization, Crocs learned what performed best across their various user segments and worked with Social Native to create more content with high performing attributes.
User-generated content has become a core part of Crocs’ organic and paid social strategy and an invaluable resource for content creation, consumer feedback, and brand growth.
Crocs is very comfortable in its own shoes. Since launching Come as You Are in 2017, Crocs has moved from the 30th most popular footwear brand to 7th in 2019, according to the Piper Jaffray’s bi-annual teen survey. And the brand continues to be on the leading edge of social media by welcoming like-minded fans to Come as You Are.
Crocs has run 15 UGC campaigns since partnering with Social Native, and in doing so has collaborated with more than 170 creators to generate over 225 images and videos. The campaign has helped Crocs reach 3.7M potential consumers, produced over 792.4k engagements with each piece of user-generated content earning an average engagement rate of 21.54%.
