For 2024, Crocs planned for increased marketing moments to highlight their Environmental Social Governance (ESG) goals. To do so in the most impactful way, I suggested developing ESG-specific branding that differentiates these efforts from Crocs' typical sales-focused marketing.

To execute this creative strategy well took some consideration. First of all, Crocs had already begun venturing into the ESG space in 2021 with the Sustainability Announcement I’d designed. This work was still being used and was still working. Secondly, I was leading a larger brand refresh of the core Crocs brand with an external agency. We needed to make sure this work was also in line with what our agency partners were developing.

I started by pulling examples from other brands. Nike, Coach, and Madewell were great examples of brands that have a mainline brand and a more purpose-focused brand. Each also had clear visual differences between their mainline and purpose brands. This was a great way for me to observe this structure in practice to see what could be applied to Crocs.

Next, I considered how the brand refresh work could apply to this project. An outcome of the brand refresh was to divide the brand into two core values – comfort, and audacity. The comfort value best related to this project as it represented Crocs' aim to be humble and accepting, while still being unserious, which would allow the brand to believably play in this still-new-to-them space and look authentic to themselves.

In the end, I developed branding that was slightly separate from the main Crocs brand, while still leaning into Crocs core values. It avoided greenwashing, was conversational and playful, and invited the audience to learn with us. I did this through creating a vibrant, flexible color palette, establishing typography rules that made the sustainability topic feel accessible, and through defining rules for imagery based on the campaign's focus area. I also provided examples for how to infuse these visuals with a bit of a human touch as a reminder of who this impacts.

Agency: Crocs in-house team, Director of Global Creative: Chris Skiles, Senior Art Director of Brand: Dominique Barnes, Copywriter: Madelyn Hadel, Manager of Global Integrated Marketing: Emily Declusin, Director of Global Purpose & Sustainability Engagement: Stephanie Brady

Scope

• Concept

• Campaign Design

• Creative Elements

• Color

• Typography

• Photography Direction