Truly Deeply/Madly

The Amaz­ing Power of Brands With Heart
It is amaz­ing at a time when en-mass we seem so dis­en­fran­chised by big, cor­po­rate, self serv­ing brands, how a ray of kind­ness can make such an impact.

TOMS Shoes is a brand with so many rays of kind­ness that it lit­er­ally out­shines the com­pe­ti­tion, made up of many of the world’s biggest shoe brands with their moun­tain­ous mar­ket­ing bud­gets. TOMS shoes (the name is a cre­ative acronym for Shoes for Tomor­row) were inspired by the local alpar­gata shoes Blake dis­cov­ered when trav­el­ing through Argentina as a con­tes­tant on real­ity TV show; The Amaz­ing Race. The shoes were so com­fort­able that he began wear­ing them regularly.

In 2006, Amer­i­can trav­eler Blake Mycoskie befriended chil­dren in Argentina and found they had no shoes to pro­tect their feet. Want­ing to help, he cre­ated TOMS Shoes, a com­pany that would match every pair of shoes pur­chased with a pair of new shoes given to a child in need. One for One. Blake returned to Argentina with a group of fam­ily, friends and staff later that year with 10,000 pairs of shoes made pos­si­ble by TOMS customers.

TOMS Shoes was founded on a sim­ple premise: With every pair you pur­chase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. One for One. Using the pur­chas­ing power of indi­vid­u­als to ben­e­fit the greater good is what we’re all about. The TOMS mis­sion trans­forms our cus­tomers into bene­fac­tors, which allows us to grow a truly sus­tain­able busi­ness rather than depend­ing on fundrais­ing for support.

Recently the TOMS Shoes One for One Move­ment has given away its one mil­lionth pair of shoes. That’s a big, bold ges­ture in any-ones lan­guage — and all this with vir­tu­ally no mar­ket­ing spend.

The TOMS mis­sion of giv­ing shoes has attracted other brands, result­ing in unique and suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tions. Ralph Lau­ren sold co-branded Polo Rugby TOMS, giv­ing a matched pair with every pair sold. Ele­ment Skate­boards has issued lim­ited edi­tion TOMS + Ele­ment shoes as well as a One for One skate­board. With every skate­board pur­chased, one will be given to a child at the Indigo Skate Camp in Dur­ban, South Africa. It is TOMS’ hope that as our One for One move­ment con­tin­ues to grow, more and more com­pa­nies will look to incor­po­rate giv­ing into what they do.

The ben­e­fits brands like TOMS derive from hav­ing kind­ness at their heart shouldn’t be under­es­ti­mated. For me this is the really rich fron­tier for brands where the act of kind­ness is wired into their rea­son for being — not tacked-on as a brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion cam­paign. As with all things brand, authen­tic­ity is the key, and when it comes to ran­dom acts of kind­ness, authen­tic­ity is what it’s all about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dave Ansett, Bran­da­men­tal­ist
Lover of Brands with Heart.
For monthly updates of our think­ing, click here to receive our free Brand Newsletter

 

Related arti­cles

• How far are you will­ing to go to put #Kind­ness into your busi­ness? TOMS shoes #giv­ing 1 for 1 [Georgina Lester] (ecademy.com)
• TOMS Shoes — Giv­ing Shoes To Needy Kids World­wide (thegoodhuman.com)
• TOMS Bare­foot Move­ment (gretchenstewart.wordpress.com)

Tags: Advertising, Brand Agency, Brand Communication, Brand Communications, brand communications agencies Melbourne, Brand Design, brand designer, Brand DNA, Brand Experience, Brand Expression, Brand Identity, brand identity agencies, brand identity designers, brand identity designers Melbourne, Brand Personality, Brand Strategy, Brand Voice, brand-designers-Melbourne, brand-gesture, Brand-Storytelling, brandamentalist, Corporate Image, Creative Ideas, Dave Ansett, David Ansett, Graphic Design Melbourne, Melbourne brand designers, Melbourne Brand Strategy, TOMS shoes brand, Truly Deeply, Visual Language

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 15th, 2011 at 7:00 am and is filed under Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand-Storytelling, Graphic Design Melbourne, Small Brands Big Personalities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.