Problem to be solved:

Footwear options that address the particularly diverse demands of a surfer going to and from the water are limited and often kooky by nature. Whether traveling to far-off destinations or simply heading to their local work-week break, surfers are looking for functional footwear that can tackle the transitionary demands of their surf routine without undermining their attention to personal style.

My Approach:

Through the lens of surf, we really wanted to work with our athletes to develop something brand new for VANS. The Trek Slip-On was just that. We wanted all photography to showcase the fact that this shoe was nearly indestructible and made new again by simply rinsing it off. All paid ads and digital marketing assets were animated to show this thought process. The landing page itself was simple and to the point. Had tech callouts and a very large product read that were impossible to miss.

My Role

This product was shown to us very early on. We had a long time to think about how to position the creative marketing strategy here. And it was tough. We went through many different approaches here. But couldn’t avoid the fact that this shoe marked a first in so many ways for VANS. I was involved in all brainstorming / concept meetings on this strategy.

Once we locked it in, I worked closely with the CD and AD for VANS Surf to get all of the assets that were needed to fit into the wireframe I developed for this particular shoe. I also worked closely with the dev team to get all animations correct, and the visual appeal of assets in order while parallaxing and semi opaque images floated around the page.

Initial Sketch for Landing Page Idea

Surfline homepage takeover

VANS Trek Slip-On landing page walkthrough

Animated Asset for paid media

The Result

Once launched, this shoe sold out completely within a few hours of online sales and had to be taken off the site and be sold in store only. It was a massive success. This campaign saw 11 pieces of press coverage, 14.2M online readership, and 49.5K coverage views. Please see live metrics on this campaign here: Trek Slip-On Metrics

The Trek Slip-On was serendipitously launched on April 1st sparking an unprecedented debate in the comments section as to whether or not this was an April fools joke. For those that weren’t engaged in the April fools debate they were either praising the innovation or hailing it as a Crocs rip-off. No matter which side of this polarizing comment section you found yourself on there was no debating one fact, it was all anyone could talk about. Easily claiming it’s position as the most shared post ever the Vans Surf Instagram account. On TikTok a video of the Trek Slip being rinsed off went viral to claim the spot as our second most viewed post ever at 1.1 million views!

In turn, what we saw was an explosion of purchase behavior both on vans.com and at partner doors.