When niche becomes the norm | Lisa Hogg, TOMS | OnBrand '17

[Music] I'm just gonna let you introduce yourself for tomsy mayor so you're really happy to be here and thank you too on brand for inviting Tom's here today because it's always a really great experience and opportunity to share our story with obviously a really interesting group of people so shall we get going oh I am I'm looking at a mountaintop so I'm it so notice the end of the day I'm sure you've heard a lot of people speaking so I'll try keep it engaging if you look bored I'm gonna break out into song and make this a silent disco so one thing and my team are here and they know I'll do it so one thing I usually like to validate quite early on in the presentation when it comes to Tom's is we are not a charity we are not a relief organization we are a business our mission is using business to improve the lives of others and the better we do business the more impact we're actually going to make to the people that matter and the people that need the help out there in the world sorry I can't see my presentation son doesn't make sure it clicks sometimes people get confused on how does it all work how does tom's actually make the impacts and and creates this business model and executes it so Thomas doesn't actually give we oh you can't see a screen I'm used to awkward moments when I present either either the front fuck's up or something goes wrong but this will be an f-bomb presentation on occasion so but I think you had to say you were over 18 to be able to join on brains so so we don't give we facilitate the gift the important thing is without the consumer we actually not going to make this happen so what we do is we create the bridge from a consumer to the people that are actually in need the other people that are super importance in what we do and you cannot underestimate this part is our giving partners so what you'll see on the screen are just a few of our amazing giving partners who we have vetted who are very important in creating that impact in the regions that we identify through the specific gifts that we identify so what they'll do is is really highlight where we need to make the impact so we obviously given very specific regions and then they make that last efforts happen and get it to the people in need the interesting thing that Tom's does that not a lot of other companies who try and emulate the same business model or behaviors is we give what's called the last mile contribution because sometimes you'll give if it's a a good space give you'll get the goods to a harbor or a port and then the giving partner has to take it from there but that means that they have to use their own funding and their own resources to make this happen and it can be very complex as you can imagine so what we do is we give them what's called a last mile contribution and they determine how to use that funding we do not predetermine it for them because it can vary in how they need to use that funding so that's something that is quite unusual in what not unusual but actually super necessary to make sure that that final give lands so another thing our giving partners do besides all the normal amazing stuff is they give us insights and they help us be better at what we do so one of the interesting things and I didn't actually know that until I was looking and researching Tom's for my job interview was the fact that there are so many different giving shoes so when we started you can see the one at the top is the L Pagar so that most people associate with our brand and we gave that to the children in need so it's a espadrille inspired argentinian origin shoe it's a canvas shoe with a rubber outsole what some people don't understand it's like so the shoe I buy from Tom's do children who need get that shoe I can tell you there are children in Africa that don't need a rope wedge sandal so we give specific you know she is that I really creates that for the children in need and really specific to what they need what's great is the the giving partners came back to us and said this singular shoe doesn't actually fulfill the needs for the kids in the regions when we try and make impacts so we got inputs and we created a sports shoe because in a lot of regions actually a lot in the u.s. supplying a sports shoe so children can actually engage in activities it's also a key shoe for one of our partners magic bus in India because by getting children involved in sports and obviously builds community and it gives a lot of positive insights and impacts into their lives in certain areas in the world you can't go to school if you don't have school shoes which is kind of mind-bending so we also have a boy in a girl's school shoe we have a winter boots obviously for children in colder conditions and then we have a all like old rubber shoe that's actually for wet conditions so children who live in areas where it's very rainy they need a shoe that is obviously something it's not going to stay wet all day so that's a way that our giving partners have actually allowed us to be even more impactful not just giving the shoe but actually giving the right shoe to children in need and what a lot of people don't know currently we are over we've given over 75 million pairs of shoes to children in need over the last 11 years so obviously with the help of our consumers because without them it wouldn't be possible it's actually got its own number that's actually quite difficult for consumers to actually digest and and really understand it's also and I've works and advertising and I've worked for a lot of sneaker brands I cannot tell you how difficult it is to get people to understand what it's like to not have shoes and the impacts of not having shoes children who need shoes are the ones that have to work for a walk for hours to get to school or walk a few hours to get water the risk of infection in children because of injury at the bottom of their feet and how infection gets into their body that's another reason that they need shoes but most of our consumers are privileged and the privilege is basic we have shoes so it's quite interesting on how you have to explain and quite a lot of detail why are giving shoes is actually important one of the other gifts are going to talk about today is our site give so we also do our way if you didn't know that and for every pair of either sunglasses or optical glasses that we sell we commit to either while restoring sites either through prescription glasses surgery or other medical treatments there are a huge amount of people in the world that actually don't have full sight due to cataracts it takes 15 minutes surgery to remove cataracts and probably a few days of recovery for people to actually be restored back to almost 20/20 vision you also have kids that just simply need prescription glasses so they can see the school board in school we have just reached a few months ago we went over the half a million mark and a lot of this work is actually done in India and the next time you buy a pair of sunglasses keep in mind that if you think about the 15 minutes it could actually take you longer to choose your next pair of sunglasses that will actually be for a life-changing surgery and the long-term impacts of this give is the fact that if you think about a mother or a father that suddenly have restored sight they can go and work again and by nature of that they obviously bring him an economic security into their family kids can go to school and become educated so the long-term implications of that are pretty astounding so when our founder was thinking about how do we diversify a product portfolio we were thinking of what is the other impact that we'd like to make and obviously this one the shoes are focused on kids and whereas the site givers actually focus on children and adults and a lot of our team have actually been and seen these surgeries and the the results of that and it is it's really really amazing so I want you to just take you back from a consumer point of view because obviously a lot of us are here and how we connect with consumers where were we in the beginning so we started 11 years ago and in the beginning had worked really well we were super unique but Blake Mycoskie our founder had this idea made it happen he never thought that he'd actually have to become a shoe salesman in order to make impacts in the world knew nothing about shoes and the way he kind of puts it is thank goodness because then he probably wouldn't have done it it would have been too many reasons not to so just went ahead and did it so made the shoes gave the shoes and the just the symbiotic nature of that on word-of-mouth just made the the brand exponentially grow so the things that it did was it gave us cultural relevance which then led to the awareness which got people engaged and then got them to buy the shoes now one of the reasons why that's gotten more difficult and that was the the title of my talk today is when niche becomes norm and the reason is that so we had this presented to us a few months ago and it's mind-bending so in 2006 we were we were on our own with a very unique business model there's certain elements of our business model which are still very unique in the fact that it is at the core of what we do but the proliferation of the one-for-one model or business with purpose has grown so much that actually our differentiating point that made us really successful in the beginning has been massively diminished it's great because it means the world in general is much more engaged in doing good but we again Beks it about one of my first points we've got to crush it from a business point of view and that's a really difficult environment to do it in when you are still quite a small a small brand so it's great that we've inspired this but then what does that next step look like and one of the things that I always like to say around here because we we do like the people are engaged in business for good but there's a differentiation that always make there's business with purpose and there's marketing with purpose and I think if you thinking of your own business or the business that you're in and how it can get engaged the longevity is the the most important thing because I feel purpose is something that the consumer is currently demanding what happens when they don't demand is that purpose suddenly gonna fall off because it's no longer commodity Tom's is grounded in a giving model if we don't give we don't exist so really you know the encouragement is don't be a marketing for purpose company if that's where it starts that's amazing and it's great but dig deeper and start making a fundamental change in your business so that when it's not something that shows up on your consumer insights that it's still deeply grounded in your your CSR or your business model in general so a way that we've kept the giving nature alive in our business is a few years ago and this is usually when people's faces contort in the audience Bain acquired 50 percent of our business and they obviously the reason various motivations behind that our founder Sol retains the other 50 percents and something that he did during that's sale of that part of the business is he took a substantial amounts of money and put it in a social entrepreneurship fund which is not connected to the commercial side of the business it said separately and with this money we then look for game changers in the social entrepreneurship angle it doesn't have to be within our sector it can honestly be in any industry and look at how as because when you come up with a really impactful idea and you either young or old social entrepreneur capital is usually the barrier for entry for a lot of people so what we look at and what Blake looks at is really finding these social entrepreneurships that if they just need a little bit of a push they can really make significant change so that's one thing where we keep the the giving and social entrepreneurship heart beating in our company and then another one that I really love is something that we do only internally so it's called the tomorrow's projects every month we have a votes so employees are encouraged to think of a cause that they really care about that can make impact and then they can submit it into the the committee that works in our global head office in LA and then we vote internally and once a month consistently someone will win and they will be given $10,000 to put to that cause and then I think it's about two days off work to kind of cover the the logistical parts of that and you can see things like they'll do a shelter a homeless shelter in LA or someone in my team is actually flying to Sri Lanka next month because he won a tomorrow's project and he's actually going to get work with the Red Cross to give relief to flooded areas in Sri Lanka and then one of my teammates in the audience is doing one that's actually well put forward one which amsterdam-based and focuses on refugees so what you do is you get a real richness of other impacts that the employees can make so the employees really feel that they're in the right place they need that motivation because it's quite a tough business to work in to be honest getting people today to care is much much harder than you think so making sure that these impassioned people that choose to work four times stay in that space and and walk the walk not just talk the talk and also that they need to get the confidence that the brands doing the same but I put this little gap because when I think of the consumer the carnot getting bored of kind of doing good and sustainability and green and all these things and it's hugely important but as you can get desensitized to the bad things in life so you can also get desensitized to the good things enough so we really challenging ourselves at times on how do we differentiate this I think we've come to the conclusion that's the soft and fluffy period of Tom's is kind of behind us we get in close to the teenage years it's time to kind of shake things up and probably bring a little bit of optimistic rebellion so you are consumers a little more attitude and grit because a lot of the stuff we talk about is really flipping serious so just bringing a little bit of attitude there but other things that we wanted to think about was consumers want you to make it easy they want to give but everybody's really busy so how do you make it really accessible for them to actually get engaged and and and just make it happen the other thing is longevity they once you believe in you but they need to see that there is a long-term commitment here they what don't want it to be a flash in the pan you've got to make sure that they feel that you are doing you know that it does what it says on the box because it's very easy for people to surprisingly easy for people to go from a point of belief so points of disbelief and when you do something good people are much more inclined to think that it's just not it's not what it is I've only been with a brand for coming up on a year and most people ask me do they really do what they say they do and I can confidently say yes and probably more because there's a lot of stuff we actually don't talk about so that longevity is also important and then activism landscape has changed significantly in the last 24 months even maybe even less people are getting more connected to things they care about and bringing them into a community so the community part is super importance that I'm not talking about things like just easily translating into social media really a sense of community and which then also if they are with like-minded people then it gets them that recognition which the brand also needs to help them get that sort of bad a badge of honor for choosing to do good and do conscious shopping and then the other one is narrative which is something that we having a lot of discussions on internally and when I say no it's if I mean things like transparency how you make certain conversations between the brand and the consumer far more transparent about a number of things and then what I like about that is that that often leads to the partnership parts that we want our supporters to have a voice in what we do to feel connected in what we do because the whole point is that we are all connected if you think back to my slide from the consumer see the person who gets the the whatever service that comes out of the give we're all connected and to use empathy to drive a little more humanity in a world that doesn't feel very human as of late so I am a little bit shorter but I'm less short less short dinner I thought I'd be so the one thing I want you to keep in mind and this is a quote that we use a lot internally is you know just don't ever you can read it up there but I'll just say that where it is in my head don't ever doubt what a small community of well-intended people can do because if everybody does a little bit together it makes a much bigger impact and I'm going to close the little video just for a little bit of feel-good factor at the end of the day to a stranger to a friend to give in such a way that has no end we are we are [Music] you see well it's madness possibility [Music] [Applause] [Music]