Groove Jones partnered with Crocs and DICK’S Sporting Goods to produce a social campaign celebrating the Crocs x NFL partnership. To highlight the collection in an eye-catching way, we created a faux Out-of-Home (OOH) video series that appeared to show giant NFL licensed Crocs being delivered onto DICK’S Sporting Goods store parking lots across the country.
Using advanced Generative AI tools and traditional VFX techniques, the Groove Jones team brought this imaginative concept to life with realistic, cinematic visuals designed for social sharing.
Challenge
Crocs wanted to promote its NFL collection in a way that felt unexpected, shareable, and technologically innovative. The campaign needed to stand out from traditional retail marketing while connecting the excitement of football season with the playful spirit of the Crocs brand.
The creative brief called for a hyper-realistic video that would stop social media users mid-scroll with a spectacle that looked believable yet was entirely mind-blowing.
Production & Technology
Groove Jones developed the concept of a AI-generated “faux OOH” video using our proprietary GrooveTech GenVFX AI pipeline. The generated video featured parachutes dropping oversized five Crocs NFL Clogs right into a DICK’S Sporting Goods store lot with excited onlookers filming the over the top event. It began with converting a static DICK’S storefront provided by the client into one that was covered in snow and decorated for the holidays.
We designed the experience through a traditional process; like storyboarding each sequence to get approval of the story.
We also modeled CGI blocking to lay out the composition of the video and to control the story we were visualizing.
To maintain precise product details of the clogs we used online cloud services to train custom LoRA models using product imagery of Crocs’ NFL Team Clogs and DICK’S Sporting Goods locations.
For this project, we combined traditional 3D workflows with custom-trained generative systems and high-end compositing to create a controlled, brand-forward social piece. We began with traditional 3D layout and animation to design all camera moves and framing, ensuring full compositional control from the outset and not just random creation. Fal.ai was used to train custom LoRAs on Crocs product imagery so the shoes retained their distinct silhouette, materials, and branding. We then brought that freshly created LoRA into ComfyUI to create the initial start and end frames. Veo 3.1 was then used for video generation, and all outputs were brought into Nuke for finishing, painting, refinement, and corrective ML passes using CopyCat.
The goal was to create a bold, scroll-stopping holiday piece that showcased the new Crocs offerings in a dynamic and visually surprising way while maintaining strict product accuracy. A major challenge was preserving fidelity during fast motion, particularly with small but critical details like Jibbits and material consistency. Because this was a branded campaign, we could not rely on generative randomness, so we used Nuke’s ML tool, CopyCat, to solve this. AI functioned as part of a directed pipeline rather than as an autonomous creator. Every stage involved human artist and client selection, refinement, and correction. Traditional compositing practices ensured the final output met professional brand standards. The result was a piece that felt energetic and polished, driven by human artistry working alongside AI tools rather than being replaced by them.
Social-Ready Finishing:
The video was completed in 2K resolution, with audio mastered for mobile playback, ensuring maximum impact and quality across digital platforms.
Results
The Crocs x NFL faux Out of Home campaign drove strong engagement across social platforms. The vertical video generated 751,000 views, 7,463 likes, 378 shares, and 111 comments on Instagram. Notably, 5 percent of users who liked the post also shared it, reflecting strong audience enthusiasm and organic amplification. Beyond metrics, the campaign created cultural impact by blending sports fandom, retail storytelling, and AI-driven creativity into a single scroll-stopping spectacle. The hyper-realistic parachuting Crocs sparked curiosity and conversation, encouraging viewers to engage, share, and celebrate the NFL collection in a bold, playful way.
By combining AI innovation, traditional VFX, sports culture, and retail storytelling, Groove Jones helped Crocs and DICK’S Sporting Goods deliver a campaign that was both entertaining and effective, driving engagement, shares, and excitement around the new NFL collection. For the fun of it, we even created some behind-the-scenes photos of the on-location “shoot” that may have occurred.
Award Winning Production
Aaron Awards
Winner
CATEGORY: Best AI Workflow for Production
