I recently shared our Marketing as Service video with a terrific interactive designer to get his reaction. He thought the video was cool but wanted to let the overall concept sink in for a bit. About a week later he sent me this note:

I came across this article in Ad Age and immediately thought of Renegade.
It’s in reference to engaging consumers by offering marketing as a
service, not an ad.

The article described a new travel-guide website created for footwear maker Crocs. The site is called Cities by Foot and provides hi-def video of different travel destinations across the country. The product rationale for the site is provided by the client:

“Crocs are the best travel shoes,” said Ed Wuensch, who happens to be Crocs’ director of marketing. “So we were thinking, ‘What platform could we use to get that across?’”

The agency behind the site, Red Robot, notes that this program is a true service to Crocs’ customers:

We didn’t want to hit consumers over the head with the Crocs brand. We wanted it to be authentic, that this is a service brought to you by Crocs,” said Mr. Flanagan [CEO of Red Robot.] And it’s a service not only to would-be pedestrian explorers but also the shopkeepers and restaurateurs, as the whole video is underwritten by Crocs. In fact, Cities by Foot offers businesses that don’t have it a one-year membership in their local Consumer & Visitor’s Bureau.

Now I realize that this is hardly the first time a client has created relevant content for its customers. The Michelin Guide comes to mind as perhaps the granddaddy of all such approaches and the most instructive. Michelin has been publishing its guide since 1900 and gave them away for the first twenty years. Hopefully Crocs will have the “wear-with-all” to stick with this concept long enough to become a trusted information resource that is so valuable travelers will be willing to pay for it and shopkeepers will covet its approval.

So, though this is a marketing road well traveled, I suspect well-heeled consumers will enjoy trekking through the site and subsequently through the cities profiled in a pair of anything-but pedestrian Crocs.

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