Crocs — The Croctober Fan Lab
Role – Senior Art Director
The footwear category is no stranger to hype drops—but unlike most brands, Crocs doesn’t have to manufacture a fanbase. It already has one. Each Halloween, Crocs celebrates that cult following with Croctober, a once-a-year product stunt sourced from the comment section. Past years have delivered everything from cowboy clogs to gothic platforms. But until now, there hadn’t been a core idea tying the chaos together.
Enter the Fan Lab.
I developed the Fan Lab as a conceptual wrapper for Croctober—an experimental R&D facility where Crocs engineers its most unhinged fan requests. The 2025 campaign centered on the release of the Unfurgettable Boot: a thigh-high, leopard-print platform born from a real comment asking for “boots with the fur, but, like… Crocs.”
The challenge wasn’t just how to launch the boot. It was how to visualize the process—to dramatize the transformation of comment into product, internet into object. From casting T‑Pain as head scientist to building a custom set and supervising motion design, my role touched every part of the campaign. I led art direction across the hero video, print system, design language, and post-production animation—helping the brand turn fan fiction into footwear.
Press
HypeBeast
Footwear News
House of Heat
Complex
Sneaker News
Sole Retriever
PR Newswire
Metrics
46.5 million impressions
Hero Film
Hero Film
In the hero film, T‑Pain plays a mad scientist in the “Fan Lab,” concocting Crocs’ most unhinged fan requests—most notably, a thigh-high, leopard-print boot inspired by real fan comments and a not-so-subtle nod to his iconic song "Boots with the Fur." The spot puts a halloweeny spin on Crocs’ annual tradition of transforming fan fiction into fashion reality.
These street-level OOH ads—placed in Crocs’ flagship market of NYC—use internet-native language and visually arresting design to capture the attention of Gen Z fans, reinforcing the brand’s storytelling through location and culture-driven relevance.
Social
A series of short-form teaser videos used glitchy motion graphics and lab-inspired visuals to hint at the upcoming drop, building intrigue around the leopard-print boot without revealing it. Designed to drive engagement and traffic to the Crocs site, the teasers were amplified further when T‑Pain himself reposted the video to his socials.