In two days, Dr. Martens will unveil the first major chapter in its ongoing face lift. Calling on a buzzy mix that spans It-girl Chloë Sevigny and comedian Naomi Watanabe through to musician Jordan Stephens, who will also be co-hosting a book club series, the brand will drop a cross-platform campaign rooted in one question: “What makes your sole bounce?”
The directive offers content creators, artists and muses a reason to pull apart their passions, forming snacky video formats, out-of-home advertising — coming to a sidewalk near you — and specialized activations. It also pays homage to the slogan — “With Bouncing Soles” — that appears on the heel tab of the brand’s signature boots.
Carla Murphy, who was appointed chief brand officer in July 2025, has been leading the charge — envisioning this moment less as a “campaign” and more as a North Star for the new Dr. Martens.
It’s part of the vision she and the team have been honing for the past two years following an operational restructure in 2024. Murphy was poached from Adidas, where she held a comfortable role as global senior vice president and general manager for the outdoor segment, reporting to CEO Bjørn Gulden.
Dr. Martens CEO Ije Nwokorie convinced her to move.
Much of the work behind Murphy’s brand reset has already blossomed; With Bouncing Soles is just one part of it. During London Fashion Week, Dr. Martens built a strong presence, airing collaborations with local fashion favorite Chopova Lowena, menswear label Labrum, and Fashion East designer Goyagoma. Each partner was chosen because of their associations with craft, a core tenet in the Dr. Martens’s brand foundation that Murphy wants to celebrate.
“I looked at the brand and thought, ‘Well, I know this brand. I own this brand.’ But then I questioned to myself, ‘Why didn’t I buy this brand in my 20s and 30s?’” says Murphy, video calling from the head office in Camden, North London.
Short-haired and intoxicatingly energetic, Murphy is describing her initial assessment of the historic shoe brand’s market relevance, and coming from a footwear background, she knew the job would be a challenge. (Per Euromonitor’s forecast, growth across the global footwear and apparel market will remain slow through 2030.) She knew about Dr.
Martens’s recent struggles, too. In the past five years, the brand’s share price has fallen 83.3%.
“[For] most brands that have a deep heritage, there’s a fine line between nostalgia and modernity. I just believed fundamentally that this brand has to be in more people’s lives, and not their closets,” says Murphy. She felt that the brand had once stood for something — more than just products — and wanted to bring that back. The storytelling, she suggests, had slipped.
A need to rebrand
Until recently, Dr. Martens was underperforming. For fiscal 2024, revenues declined 9.8% year-on-year to £877.1 million — a drop attributed to weaker wholesale, particularly in the US. In that same period, EBITDA fell 19% from £245 million to £197.5 million, with additional weight from investment in the business. In fiscal 2025, revenues declined 8.2%, generating £787.6 million; EBITDA fell 40.8% to £117 million.
In tandem with the restructure, Dr. Martens has since stabilized, returning to profitable growth in 2026.
For the year, the business reported £764.9 million in revenue, down 1.4% since 2025. This stabilization, per the company’s latest earnings release, will be followed by a continued pivot and scaling phase for 2027, moving the business away from channel-based to consumer-led marketing.
“Product is still the center of everything we present,” confirmed Nwokorie over email. “What’s evolved is that we no longer treat product and brand as separate jobs, because consumers never did.”
The With Bouncing Soles campaign is, the CEO argues, product marketing with more to hold onto: the craft, the making and the people who wear the products — all communicated across product design, retail strategy and marketing.
When Murphy first came in, Nwokorie explained the lay of the land and what he wanted to achieve in the coming years. This included better consumer connection, elevated products, curating the marketplace, and a continued streamlining of operational infrastructure. His brief to Murphy? Make it happen.
Wearers come first
According to Murphy — who has since overhauled the brand’s digital, product, and customer merchandising strategy — it was essential for the new approach to be “outside in”, which means addressing the market from the consumer’s perspective. Murphy looked closely at how consumers adopt the brand’s products today, picking up on the cultural circles that have developed around Dr.
Martens. “Brands don’t shape communities; communities shape themselves,” she says.
On TikTok, this has meant embracing fandom communities, working closely with partners that inspire frenzied collectors, such as The Power Puff Girls and Metallica. On Instagram, however, the approach has prioritized VIP early releases and partner storytelling.
Dr. Martens has a history of people adopting and translating the brand from its original target market. Indeed, the brand traveled from wartime Germany to Britain, where it took off in the ’60s as a working-class staple, worn by postmen and factory workers. From there, subcultures — including skinheads, punks, goths and more — made the boots their own, cementing Dr. Martens firmly in British fashion culture.
“We don’t have a recognition issue at Dr. Marten’s. You know, we’re very iconic,” says Murphy. “[But] that’s different to being timeless and relevant.” As she sees it, the brand needed recontextualizing in order to build consumer consideration. That means partner collaborations wholly new designs inspired by Dr. Martens’s signature tropes, and smart innovations to existing products based on consumer appetites.
Murphy notes demand around the brand’s sandals, which are already recognizable for their rubber soles and welted design. But she wants to push this further, chiming with a broader business objective to extend the category.
In fiscal 2026, the brand’s Zebzag backless mule and sandal designs performed well, however category revenues declined 11%, ascribed to a lack of newness in the Spring/Summer 2025 offering. Following SS26, there was incremental improvement — carried by the US market — but the company doesn’t expect substantial change until after SS27, when the fully redeveloped range launches.
Nuance is key. Rather than developing a seasonal campaign and flushing that across a set of different channels with the same visuals, Dr. Martens is closely monitoring consumer demands as they exist across platforms and communities. This means allowing the social teams to pivot, perhaps keeping a campaign live on one channel — where there might be traction — but shifting it out on another platform to align with momentum around another product.
In Dr. Martens’s bid to be more client focused, team structures shifted and new hires were made.
Whereas before, a more bureaucratic and siloed system had delayed marketing decisions, corporate layers of approval have been shortened. “Now, we’ve got our general managers of our markets who will pick up the phone and say to the global marketing director, ‘Hey, what about this?’ And it’s like, ‘OK, done.
Let’s speak to [the] product [department].’” That efficiency also means the teams are empowered to take risks and crystalize strategies for their local markets.
In this vein, talents have been pooled from far and wide, spanning high fashion backgrounds to global sportswear résumés. In November, Isadora Versiani will join the company as global product design director from Marc Jacobs, where she last worked as global footwear design director. Nadia Svensson, who worked at Adidas for five years, will also assume a new post at Dr. Martens as global merchandising and product director.
Premiumization
The brand is doubling down on its communication of craft, finding fresh ways to remind people of its provenance and heritage.
The Made in England line, for instance, offers consumers iconic designs handcrafted in the original Dr. Martens factory in Wollaston, Northamptonshire, with each pair signed and sealed by the person that boxed it.
A pair of classic 1460 Dr. Martens boots in this range cost £220, while a general release pair of 1460s sit at £170.
But the push for premiumization applies across the entire brand, Murphy says. How does that square with a brand that prides itself on accessibility?
“Being customer-led [means] experiences that feel premium, not premium experiences,” she says, explaining that the focus is on ensuring consumers feel the tangible and sensorial elements of the brand across the storytelling. “I would say we hadn’t been putting that story together.” Murphy cites the premium leathers, the hardy industrial construction, heat welting, and the sourcing behind each design — behind-the-scenes elements that come to the fore.
On shop floors and online that commitment to premiumization is rewiring the Dr. Martens approach. “We’re growing our shoes category, reducing our reliance on discounting, and deepening our wholesale partnerships,” affirmed Nwokorie. “With Bouncing Soles is how we convert that progress into consumer demand: one consistent expression of Dr. Martens across every touchpoint.”
For Murphy, it’s a long road ahead, but she’s confident. The website redesign soft-launched in August. “On there, you can see the types of stories that we were never telling,” she says. Currently, a photo album of user-generated content, showcasing products worn by anyone who tags @drmartensoffical sits on-site, alongside a banner dedicated to the ongoing Rick Owens collab, and a notable mix of footwear, spanning loafers through to platforms and sandals.
Now, the bigger tentpole moments will follow. But, Murphy adds, that’s only the beginning. “We’re not moving away from our icons; our icons are only going to become more present. But the rejuvenation, the interpretation, the reinvention — that’s where that’s where the team will be scrutinizing,” she says.