Why the Marketing Genius Behind Crocs and Stanley Says Social Media Deserves 50% of Your Time

There's a poster in Terence Reilly's office that reads: 'Those holes are where your dignity leaks out.'

He hung it up on his first day at Crocs. That was 2013. The shoes were a joke back then. Nobody wanted to be caught dead in them.

Fast forward seven years. Post Malone is designing his own pair. Bad Bunny, too. Crocs are stomping down runways at London Fashion Week. Reilly's teenage daughters, who once refused to touch the things, now beg him for free samples.

So what happened?

From Punchline to Runway

Reilly happened. And he did it again at Stanley, turning a 110-year-old thermos company into the hottest brand on TikTok. Revenue increased from $70 million to $750 million over about 4 years. The Quencher tumbler had 150,000 people on a waiting list at one point.

Now he's back at Crocs running brand strategy, and he's telling anyone who'll listen that social media deserves half their time.

Not just the marketing team's time. Everyone's.

'I spend a lot of time on Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, YouTube,' he said in a recent interview with the New York Post. 'Social media in general is just an amazing opportunity for any brand of any size. That's where consumers are.'

The Post Malone Phone Call

Here's the thing. Reilly doesn't mean posting more. He means watching. Listening. Paying attention to what people actually care about instead of guessing from a boardroom.

The Post Malone deal happened because a young Crocs employee named Toria Roth spotted a photo of the rapper wearing clogs. Not for a joke. Just wearing them. She brought it to Reilly. He called the management team that week. A few months later, the collaboration launched and the website crashed from traffic.

Malone wasn't paid to love Crocs. He already did. That's why it worked.
'When you have that authenticity, you have gold,' Reilly said. 'You can't really manufacture it.'

Three Women and a Blog Changed Everything

Stanley's turnaround followed the same playbook. Three women running a blog called The Buy Guide had been obsessing over the Quencher tumbler for years. Reilly flew them to Colorado. They helped reshape the whole strategy. New colours. Limited drops. Treating restocks like sneaker releases.

Then a woman posted a TikTok showing her Stanley survived a car fire. Reilly saw it. He offered to buy her a new car. The video hit 94 million views. You can't buy that kind of exposure.

Neither company had a huge influencer budget. They didn't chase celebrities. They found people who already loved the product and gave them reasons to keep talking.

The Airport Test

Reilly has this test he uses. He wanders through airports and counts how many people are wearing his shoes or carrying his bottles. If travellers are willing to lug a product through security when overhead bin space is tight, you've built something real.

Early on at Crocs, the occasional pair he spotted looked like someone had given up on life. By the time he left, they looked aspirational.

Things aren't perfect right now. Crocs revenue dipped 2.5 per cent last quarter. Hey Dude, another brand he oversees, dropped over 20 per cent. Trends shift. People get cautious with money. Reilly's been through rough patches before.

Why 50 Per Cent Matters

But he keeps swinging.

'You make your own luck,' he said. 'There's always going to be an element of luck to anything, but you have to make it. You got to go out and swing.'

The products at Crocs and Stanley barely changed. The stories around them changed completely. Crocs stopped fighting the ugly shoe jokes and leaned in. Stanley went from selling green bottles to outdoorsy men to selling pastel tumblers to young women obsessed with hydration aesthetics.

Both brands found their people on social media. They listened. They moved fast. They let fans shape the narrative instead of trying to control it.

That's why Reilly thinks 50 per cent of your time belongs there. Not because posting matters. Because that's where culture gets made now. Miss it and you're guessing. Catch it and you might just turn foam shoes into a fashion statement.