In June 2021, Crocs Europe embarked upon the collaboration of a lifetime with Russian Pop band sensation, Little Big who's known for viral YouTube music videos that collect billions of views. The band was the Russian contender for the 2020 Eurovision, before it got cancelled. Back in 2020, the band still launched its Eurovision number, Uno on YouTube, which reached nearly 230 million views!
The band members, especially Ilya and Sonya, are huge fans of Crocs. Their videos exude the quirky and eccentric nature of the brand and the Little Big fanbase consists of European (and Asian) underground pop culture within the Gen Z and Millennial audiences so they were the perfect collab partner for Crocs.
The collab shoes were made of two key styles, one bubble gum pink and one punk rock rave style in black with studs and chains with etchings and markings from Little Big's clothing line. Huge Jibbitz with the band logo and teddy bears that symbolise the members could be attached to the shoes too.
The main and most important aim of the collaboration was to sell out within 24 hours. Alongside this, KPIs were set for driving email sign ups (aim 3,000), engagement rate (aim 5%), to uplift traffic on the site of launch day (aim 10%) and increase follower growth to the European Instagram channel (aim +5%). We were looking to overperform our standard monthly community increase metrics and achieve 5%+ growth in the month that the collab launched.
The launch campaign had to match the outrageousness of Little Big Crocs!
The insight to this campaign was about internet culture and virality. Internet culture being meme-type content, shareable and engaging but also low-fi and authentic to a social media audience. Gen Z creators are sitting in their rooms making content, and it was fitting to create a social media competition campaign that aligned with this and Little Big was the perfect partner for this.
The collab began on the 4th of June 2021 when the band released a 'not-so-subtle' teaser of the collaboration when the punk-rock-rave inspired collab clogs in bubble gum pink and gothic black appeared on the feet of all the main band members in their cover of Backstreet Boys' 90s classic, 'Everybody' - now at over 25 million views on YouTube!
Filmed in a castle in Moscow, this music video brought together Eastern and Western fairytales and was sprinkled in satirical jokes fuelled by the social media culture we live in today - in classic Little Big style. We saw references to things such as Tesla, Botox, Selfies, credit cards, sushi and more.
One week later, when the internet was already buzzing with hype, we officially announced the collab through a matrix of integrated marketing channels.
Social Media Activation - With the band we developed a 30-second cut of the music video, multiple short clips and still imagery from the shoot showcasing the clogs in all their glory. With this content we drove traffic from Instagram and TikTok to the sign up page on Crocs.eu and the relevant market landing pages utilising both the European channels, Russian channels and the band's TikTok and Instagram.
Social Media Innovation - this was built to drive insane hype for the collab. We created an Instagram AR filter that cut out and placed the heads of users onto the main band members in the music video - paired with soundbites famous to the soundtrack users could become part of the band and sing along in these clips made famous by the Everybody music video. People that used the filter and reposted could be in with a chance of winning a once in a lifetime collectable item (1 of only 4 in the world), the Little Big collab Roller Skate Crocs (Creelies) that were used in the music video production!
PR - we did a shoot with DAZED magazine who also distributed the stills on social media, seeded top fashion focused influencers from around the world with a PR box filled with the clogs, Little Big Crocs socks and more goodies that would guarantee a repost.
Web and Ecommerce - we created a bespoke online ecomm experience and kicked off the sale on launch day with a live session on Instagram streamed simultaneously across Crocs Russia, Crocs Europe and Crocs Korea Instagram channels that saw the two main band members, Ilya and Sonya, styling their greatest outfits from previous music videos with our brand new collab Crocs.
The results were beyond belief. The collection sold out in 1 HOUR in Japan, Russia and Europe! And in only 4 MINUTES in Korea!
The collab was featured in major media outlets mounting to over 620 million impressions, and caused quite the stir online with 35.8 million in influencer reach, a 75% open rate of the filter, 13% capture rate, 6%+ follower growth, 6% ER on branded content, 5.4k sign ups and 12% uplift in traffic to the website on launch day.
It's safe to say, we went a Little Big with this one!
Watch the case study video HERE.
