Toms Shoes and How a New Design Meme Emerges in Front of Your Eyes

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2008-12-23 09:03:00 UTC
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One of my favorite socially-focused businesses is Toms Shoes, which donates a pair of shoes to someone in need for every pair purchased at the normal rate. Since they started in early 2006, they've donated over 60,000 shoes to folks in Argentina and South Africa.

Their holiday campaign this year is to donate 30,000 pairs of shoes to people in Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, more than 1,000,000 people suffer from Podoconiosis, a disease caused by Silica (ancient volcano glass) in the soil, which enters the body through the bottom of the foot and can cause debilitating swelling and inflamation of the legs.

Toms is a great company that is serious about their social mission and also sells a great product. They're also the latest to get in on the emerging typography-video-for-social-change design meme launched by the Girl Effect. I don't mean this as a knock on them (or any of the others below), its just fascinating to watch a cultural artifact replicate itself in real time. Check out the videos below:

Toms Shoes holiday campaign:

The Girl Effect:

Starbucks vote campaign:

Starbucks (Red):

Declaration of Human Rights:

By the way, I still think the Girl Effect video stands heads and tails above the others - although Toms is good. Not even because of originality, but because it recognizes that the music is the driving force, where the others seem a bit more concerned with the typographic style. More about the Girl Effect here.

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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