There is a certain kind of insult that functions, upon closer inspection, as a compliment. The schoolyard taunt that confirms you have been noticed. The parody that requires familiarity with the original. The meme that circulates precisely because it cannot be ignored.
Terence Reilly, the chief brand officer of Crocs, has built a career on this principle. He once hung a meme on his office wall that read, "Those holes are where your dignity leaks out." It was not there as a wound. It was there as a reminder.
Mr. Reilly, whose résumé includes stints at Stanley and HeyDude, has spent the last several years transforming Crocs from a punchline into something rather more durable: a punchline that sells. The brand has become one of the more culturally fluent operations in the footwear business, a category not historically known for its sense of humor about itself.
His method, as he describes it, involves a willingness to move quickly when something works — and to trust the people closest to the culture to recognize what that might be. The brand's collaboration with the musician Post Malone, for instance, originated with an intern who had a photograph on their phone. A viral video involving a Stanley tumbler and a car fire did not, Mr. Reilly noted, pass through multiple rounds of legal review.
(One imagines the legal department's feelings about this were not solicited in advance.)
The underlying philosophy is that marketing, done well, operates less like a careful siege and more like a competitive sport — one in which the occasional loss is the price of admission for the occasional win.
It is a theory that has worked well enough for Crocs, which has managed to remain in the conversation long after the initial wave of mockery subsided. The dignity, it seems, has not entirely leaked out.
Original story published in adweek.com: "How Crocs Made a Punchline Into a Competitive Advantage"