CROCS | NYC STORE LAUNCH
THE BIGGEST BALLOON ADVERTISING STRATEGY YOU’VE EVER SEEN!
The Berry and Crocs built a full 360° campaign to launch Crocs stores on 34th Street and SoHoNYC.
The brief called for an original, culturally connected response involving Crocs very own GIANT Thanksgiving Day Balloons for the parade! This was a campaign that would not only launch the Crocs NYC stores… but would cut through the market and build organic audience growth and momentum, through digital content, CGI, print, influencer vfx videos and IRL activations.
SET UP.
Crocs set the tone for the entire campaign with a series of behind the scenes images showing the supposed preparation of the giant balloons. These visuals were crafted to look entirely authentic, capturing crews handling inflated Crocs balloons in warehouse spaces and on city streets. The intention was to validate the world of the film before it even launched, creating the impression that everything to follow had to be real. In reality, every image was built through detailed CGI and compositing, designed to blur the line between fabrication and fact and to anchor the campaign in believable myth-making.
BALLOONS ESCAPE!
To generate buzz on social platforms, The Berry created a series of CGI driven moments that brought the balloon escape narrative to life. The social video campaign featured convincing spectacles of the Crocs balloons slipping their ropes by Central Park, a runaway clog bouncing off a building, and an apartment-view front row seat to the unfolding chaos. These playful vignettes were supported by a tongue in cheek DOOH execution from Crocs, all designed to make the escape feel real and fuel conversation across New York and beyond.
Crafting convincing UGC moments.
The campaign leaned heavily into realism, with every video crafted to feel like genuine user generated content. The Berry designed each moment to appear as if it had been captured spontaneously on an iPhone, avoiding anything overly polished or cinematic. The footage was framed with hurried camera movement and imperfect angles to mirror the way people document unexpected events in real life. This authentic approach was essential, helping the balloon escape feel believable and ensuring viewers saw the spectacle as a real moment unfolding in New York rather than a piece of planned advertising.
WANTED! HUGE CROCS BALLOONS. [HUGE REWARD]
To carry the CGI driven story into the real world, The Berry rolled out wheat pasted posters across New York. Each poster matched the look of the social content to convince passersby that the balloon escape had really happened. The placements also directed people to Crocs’ new store locations and promoted large in store rewards and discounts, bridging the online spectacle with real world action.
EXTRA, EXTRA: READ ALL ABOUT IT!
To push the illusion even further, The Berry created a full faux newspaper and matching kiosk reporting on the balloon escape. The paper included easter eggs, incident maps, mini games and fabricated journalist stories, all presented as genuine coverage of the event. Most importantly, it featured a scannable barcode that readers could bring into Crocs stores for special discounts, turning the fictional reportage into a real world incentive.
BLOWING UP SOCIALS.
The social strategy delivered huge traction across platforms, with the hyper realistic CGI moments convincing audiences that the escape was genuinely unfolding in New York. Comment sections filled with viewers debating whether the footage was real, which became a core driver of engagement and conversation. The campaign accumulated 3,000,000 views and 23,000 likes on Instagram, along with 764,000 views and 29,000 likes on TikTok. The reaction showed how effectively the narrative blurred fiction and reality, reigniting excitement around the Crocs brand and turning the balloon escape into a fully fledged online moment.
HOW TO BUILD A HUGE CROCS BALLOON...
So if you’ve read this far and you thought our Crocs balloons were actually REAL… well, fair play to us!
For the hero assets, The Berry selected a set of official Crocs Jibbitz that were fun, colourful and instantly recognisable. The team recreated a pink Crocs clog, a donut, a pizza, a pineapple, a love heart and a flower as fully inflated, slightly wrinkled parade style balloons. Each was modelled from scratch to feel believable at large scale, forming the core assets used throughout the CGI work.
NO HELIUM REQUIRED.
To bring the balloon assets to life, The Berry used 3D software to replicate realistic parade-balloon physics at full scale. Houdini handled the balloon and rope simulations, giving the inflatables the right amount of deformation, weight and string behaviour. Cinema 4D was used for the main CGI build and animation, with Redshift handling lighting and rendering to match the look realistic balloon materials. Each balloon was then integrated into live action plates shot in New York, aligning lighting, movement and perspective so the inflatables felt naturally embedded in the city.
