George Nguyen, managing director at McKinney in New York, told Campaign it’s a good fit because the agency has experience building global ad campaigns. McKinney is part of Cheil Worldwide, which has 47 offices in 40 countries. That’s a big deal for Crocs, which sells 50 million pairs of shoes globally each year. To date, Crocs has sold 300 million pairs of shoes in 90 countries.
McKinney’s efforts will focus on markets in the US, China, Japan, South Korea, the UK and Germany. Nguyen said the diversity of the brand's many markets will be one of the agency’s biggest challenges.
"We’re in so many markets, we just have to make sure we do what’s right for each market because they’re so vastly different," he said.
Nguyen said McKinney will focus on educating the international market about the Crocs brand.
"It’s a very fashionable brand," he said. "In Tokyo, they just recently had a fashion show for Crocs. At the same time, it’s a much more established brand here in the US. So we will be going back to some core truths about the brand, what makes people love them, what makes people love their products."
Crocs was previously represented by Cramer Krasselt out of Chicago.