What to do?

Once upon a time a couple of friends stumbled across a weird compound that seemed near magically resistant to bacteria and surprisingly slip resistant. They managed to fashion this alien goo into a series of mind-numbingly ugly shoes and offered them for sale in something like 17 billion different colors. From that moment on a fad was born.

Crocs were everywhere. Moms, dads, kids, grandparents, nurses, anyone and everyone ran out to score their very own pair of so-ugly-they’re-cute orthopedic mules. The IPO was a smash and the sky was officially the limit for Crocs the company. Crocs exploded into a massive conglomerate almost overnight. They went on to make marketing deals with almost everyone and made sure that shoes that were once hard to find were so easily available you could even buy a pair at Costco. And none too soon. The counterfeiters were working overtime and the knockoffs began to appear. Now folks could buy the Crocs they craved (or a reasonable facsimile) for one-third the price. Crocs stepped up their branding by making it “important” to own the original and hoping that peer pressure would help in keeping folks buying the real deal over the mall kiosk rip-off. Still, the clock was ticking.

All it took was few missed profit targets and the analysts saw blood in the water. Crocs were labeled “a one trick pony,” a “passing fad” and something “destined to disappear.” The stock price started to fall and the news got even worse. Suddenly there were warnings of escalator horrors for Croc-clad small children. Bans were suggested or at least major re-designs in the interests of safety. The fad was dying and the backlash was building. The hatred the shoe was beginning to engender was truly a thing to behold. It was the kind of tasty bile reserved only for the super successful. (Think Tom Cruise and his current public persona of professional raving lunatic and ox office pariah).

So now your brand is dead as disco. What was once cool and edgy has now become the safe choice of herd thinkers while the parade of the cool makes a hard left turn and marches right on by. You have to act fast. There is a small window to try to win back the crowds before they abandon you once and for all. (See Jackson, Michael and failed second chances).

So they made a new pitch. Crocs started running a pretty ingenious ad where they take the “Croc backlash” and use it as a backdoor attempt to own the disdain and reawaken the love.

In the new black and white TV spot a young guy holds a singular bright blue Croc in his hands and screams insanely at it. He waves it in the camera’s face shouting “Why are you wearing these? Why? Why? WHY?” He grabs it with both hands and grunts and sputs as he tries to rip the object of his hatred in half. He can’t – it’s too strong. He screams even more, now furious that the shoe has defeated him. Wailing away, psycho guy throws the shoe as hard as he can only to find it on the floor as he bends down screaming even more at it. He could be no closer to an aneurysm if he tried.

Then the words hit the screen and pop out in turn: comfortable, ergonomic, anti-microbial, odor resistant, lightweight and finally the kicker – “and apparently makes people really angry.” Then it lays out its new slogan – What a Croc!

This is a great ad. Anytime you have the spectacle of some nutjob screaming his fool head off at a shoe you know you’ve struck gold. Anyone not on-side with unhinged displays of irrational anger just isn’t trying hard enough. The part of the ad that’s amazing though is the whole flip job the spot does. It takes a shoe that has become so ubiquitous that there are people incensed enough to yell at it and makes it a rebel buy. By taking that hostility and re-blending it back into the shoe by suggesting that anyone wearing such a thing is really being counter-culture is a stroke of genius. Cue my mouth falling open.

I once threw out a perfectly good superhero lunch-kit because a few kids who had their food in paper bags convinced me their container was cooler. I whined to my parents about needed a “brown paper bag” so that I could be cool too. Once a sucker always a sucker I guess.

I do kind of hope Crocs manages to pull it all back together. I might not be entirely crazy about their fugly shoe but I am totally curious about what route they’ll try next.

I say hats is the way to go...comfortable, ergonomic, anti-microbial, odor resistant, lightweight hats that can go about making people irrationally angry as they pop up like dandelions on soft heads everywhere.