Instrument wins Crocs' business, gets assignment one day after its pitch
Laurel Burton, Instrument's CEO, said Crocs handed the agency a creative and technology assignment the day after hearing its pitch in a multi-agency review earlier in 2026. The brief covered new digital visibility for Crocs' e-commerce business, from onsite experiences and CRM to performance marketing and campaign launches. Instrument, part of Stagwell's Code and Theory Network, has since built a new homepage template for the holiday season and is redesigning Crocs' full website, while also managing thousands of pieces of content across the brand's digital footprint. Burton said the agency built tools on top of Figma to handle the intake and execution of Crocs' creative assets, evaluated on a quarterly basis, automating work that "normally took weeks and months and multiple humans." Crocs vp of creative Ginny Golden said the agency's blend of creative point of view and data-backed rigor gave the brand confidence in the partnership.
Winning a multi-agency review with a same-day assignment sets a fast pace for agency onboarding, rewarding shops that already have production tooling built. Instrument's Figma-based asset system lets Crocs shift budget away from hiring production designers and toward strategy and creative work, a shift other brands managing large content libraries are likely to request in future reviews. Stagwell has cited its digital transformation group, which houses Instrument and the rest of the Code and Theory Network, as a driver of revenue and profit growth after first-half 2026 earnings, a result other holding companies are likely to study as they build out similar in-house tech benches.