Does purpose really sell?

TOMS helped prove that a business could connect commercial growth with positive impact. Its One for One model transformed a simple shoe purchase into a story millions of people wanted to join.

But not everyone agrees that purpose drives sales. Some argue that product, price and positioning do the real commercial work, while purpose merely gives customers another reason to care. Others question whether purpose can remain credible once it becomes part of the marketing machine.

Former TOMS brand leader Justin Herber joins us to examine the argument from inside one of the world’s best known purpose led brands.

We explore how TOMS became a cultural movement, why its story resonated, what the company got right and wrong, and whether purpose can genuinely produce commercial growth.

Justin also reveals what Hollywood can teach us about brand storytelling, why strong brands need tension and how founders can build a belief that shapes the entire business rather than becoming another campaign line.

We discuss:

  • Whether purpose genuinely influences purchasing
  • What made the TOMS One for One story so powerful
  • How customers became participants in the brand
  • The difference between authentic purpose and purpose marketing
  • Why some challenger brands become movements
  • What TOMS got right and wrong while scaling
  • Whether purpose must be embedded in the business model
  • Why consumers have become cynical about corporate purpose
  • How narrative can align an entire organisation
  • Whether another TOMS could succeed today

About Justin

Justin Herber is a brand strategist and creative leader whose career spans Hollywood, TOMS, Hot Wheels and Tractor Beverage. As an early brand lead at TOMS, he helped shape the storytelling behind one of the world’s most influential purpose led brands. He later became the first Chief Brand and Marketing Officer at Tractor Beverage and now advises founders and leadership teams on narrative, positioning and storytelling.

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Transcript

Today, purpose-driven brands are everywhere, but there was a time when the idea that buying a product could directly create positive change in the world felt genuinely disruptive. TOMS became one of the brands that absolutely changed that. It didn’t just challenge the footwear category, it challenged our expectations of what a business could be turning customers into participants in a much bigger story.

On today’s episode, we want to explore how you build a challenger brand around a belief and turn that belief into a movement. And we’ve got the perfect person to explore this with us because we want to introduce you all to Justin Herber, a brand strategist and creative leader whose career has spanned both Hollywood and some of the world’s most interesting challenger brands. Justin started out in the entertainment industry before moving into brand building, becoming an early brand and storytelling lead at TOMS, where he helped shaped the early narrative as the company grew from a shoe brand into a global purpose-driven movement. He went on to lead creative strategy for brands including Hot Wheels, before becoming the first chief brand and marketing officer at Tractor Beverage, helping take the business from an early stage challenger to a national brand. Today, Justin advises founders and leadership teams on brand narrative, positioning and storytelling with a particular belief that the strongest brands aren’t built around products, they’re actually built around stories and beliefs that people want to be part of. Justin, welcome to the JUST Branding Podcast.

It is such a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me, guys.

It’s great to have you on. I’m excited. We’ve been talking back and forth for a few months now. To finally get you on in all your glory, I can’t wait to tuck into this because who doesn’t love a challenger brand, particularly one that’s purpose-driven. I know we’re going to tuck into all of that stuff just shortly. But before we get there, I know you started off in Hollywood and then moved into brand building. So perhaps we could just sort of ask, what connects those two worlds?

There’s so much overlap between the two worlds, and it’s not what I would normally see. To me, I think the biggest connected tissue is the idea of theme and purpose, being the emotional driver of story and of entertainment and also brand. So if you think about a movie that just has an idea and a plot but no emotional thrust, that’s like having a brand that has a product and some marketing but no real contention underneath it. So for me, I always think about what’s the why, what’s the theme we’re exploring, whether that’s me writing a TV show or building a brand, what are you really anchoring your belief system in, and then how do you express it? Then we can go on to talk about how a brand is really, and its community is the protagonist, and you’re pushing against something in the same way that you would in a screenplay or in a TV series. So to me, there’s been a pretty seamless translation, but the language is a little different in each one.

I love how you mentioned tension, because that brings drama, that brings excitement, that brings intrigue, everyone’s suddenly leaning in when there’s a bit of tension. You’re absolutely right. So tell us the story. You started off in Hollywood, and obviously, we’ve mentioned you went to TOMS, you’ve done a bunch of other stuff. Perhaps give us a potted history. Perfect.

So the long backstory. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a filmmaker. I grew up in Texas. There really wasn’t a pathway for filmmakers in Texas, and I ended up making my way to California by way of Pepperdine University on a fine arts scholarship, knowing that’d be my way into the entertainment world. So after graduating college, I applied to every single post-production house in Santa Monica and somehow ended up interviewing with Michael Bayes, his editing house, and from there, I got introduced to Michael Bayes’ team and then became Michael Bayes’ creative assistant, project, new production assistant, everything assistant at the age of 22. So I had a direct line into Hollywood, but also into commercials because Michael was one of the most successful commercial directors at the time. So I really liked the way that he could work on longer-form narrative and also short-form content, and that was exactly what excited me about telling stories. And so I really got almost an apprenticeship working under him for two years. And then from there, I went on my own and decided to learn how to, I decided to go to film school without having to pay for it. So I worked on the agency side, I worked on the post-production side, and got massive exposure to the apples of the world, a bunch of car accounts to not only agency side, but production company side, to the business side of it, and was able to see all the pieces and how they work together. And then I eventually got a call from a friend from the entertainment days who said, hey, I took this job at a company that is trying to give shoes away, and will you come talk to me about it? So one of my friends was the ninth employee at TOMS, and as they grew, I would shadow advise and give them different ideas. And then they brought me on to help them launch Eyewear, which is their second one for one product. So all of the brand stuff that I was doing led to me having a robust understanding of how things got made, and all the entertainment stuff I did around writing screenplays, developing, et cetera, gave me a real concept for narrative thrust. So it was the idea of not only storytelling, but the visual expression of those ideas. And so that was, TOMS is the perfect thing for me because it brought all those worlds together, and it was a company that had this amazing story that just needed to have it brought to life. And that was my very fortunate role to have.

Right, so just for folks who perhaps don’t know much about TOMS, you mentioned One for One. Do you mind explaining to everyone what that idea was?

Sure, so the founder of TOMS was this amazing entrepreneur, and he was on a trip to Argentina, and he saw some kids without shoes. And he met some people who were on a shoe drive, and he started asking, well, what happens if people stop giving shoes to these kids and they don’t get shoes? So he decided to create a company where what if he sold a pair of shoes and if a pair of shoes sold, he would give to somebody in need. So they called it TOMS Shoes, Shoes for Tomorrow was the idea, and the business model was One for One. And so that was the first real company that integrated giving into business. You had companies that had foundations and charitable givebacks, but this is a company that said, hey, we’re putting giving first, and really we’re gonna challenge the way we think about the role of business in society. And I think that was what really, beyond the inventiveness of the business model, the idea that companies could do more and had a different role they could play in society and a different role they could play with consumers was really the power of the brand at the time.

And they’re still doing it now, aren’t they? I think One for One.

Yeah, so of all their giving model, we use the One for One model to introduce handbags, eyewear, coffee. So they always had to have a One for One component. And then they’ve evolved the giving model to be, it’s after my time. So I don’t really know exactly how it functions, but the way it did at the time was all, it had to be One for One. You buy this, it impacts a community this way.

Nice. And it’s for profit, the company, right?

All for profit. Yeah. So that was the exciting thing about it because Blake recognized that charity might fall short, but if you had something that was a business, then that could potentially create long-term impact. So he really flipped the idea on its head. And it was, he’s an amazing person and an incredibly inspiring individual and entrepreneur. And he just saw the world differently. And that was the magic of it all.

So when you arrive at TOMS, this crazy idea, right? What was it like? Give us a sense. Only nine people. So were you number 10, number 11, something like that? Like what was it like? Give us a description of what it was like.

So when I first came in, it was, my friend was the ninth employee, and everyone’s bagging up shoes and shipping them and all hands on deck type thing. I didn’t officially come in until they were about 85, 90 people. So they would always bring in and say, yeah, so they would say, hey, we’re launching a new product. Can you help us do this for $7? And I’m like, $7 doesn’t really pay me, but they eventually were able to, when they launched their one-for-one product, the second one I wear, they said, hey, we’re going to Nepal for 10 days. And it’s the founder and a couple of his friends, and they’re going to see if there’s a giving model for site. Would you be interested? I’m like, 10 days in Nepal sounds amazing. So I quit the job that I had at the time, which was producing visual effects at a major VFX house, and then just bought a plane ticket and went to Nepal for 10 days. And it was a life-changing experience.

You’ve been to Nepal, Jacob, I know you’re a very well-traveled man.

Yes, we have. There’s a lot of hiking around there. Yeah. Cool place.

There we are. Recommend it?

Yeah, absolutely. Definitely.

Jacob’s are like resident traveler. Like I’ve traveled a little bit. Thanks, traveler, Matt.

We’ve got four muppets now.

Oh, yeah. Really leave the house.

No more travel for you for a few years.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was an, I mean, it’s a journey to get there, right? It’s like 30 hours of travel from Los Angeles, where TOMS is based.

Yeah. It was just after an earthquake as well when I was there. So it was all like a lot of rubbles and a lot of recovery and everything. But it was still amazing people and a lot of cool things to see, obviously, it’s a beautiful place in the world.

Yeah, the Hanna printer range, this is amazing. It was an incredible place to be.

Were you filming there, Justin, then, at that early point? And so you’re telling the story from the founders, what they were doing, documenting, I guess. And then, so you then went to work for TOMS for a while. First of all, next question was, when was that roughly?

So this was in 2010. So you’d asked earlier about what was TOMS like when I walked in, right? So everyone was a believer. And I think this is what founders really need to anchor into. Like when you’re early stage, everyone was bought into the belief system of TOMS. So it was a bunch of 20-somethings that thought they could change the world, right? And there’s a few more senior level people, but it really was a company that operated on belief. So they really thought that every thing we did on a daily basis made a big impact. So that was the culture of the place. And it was also the culture of Venice and Santa Monica at the time, among 20-somethings. There’s groups like Falling Whistles and Charity Water. They were all trying to do something more impactful. This is your Obama era aspirational, like optimistic millennial, right? So everything was about how do you create a better world? And so TOMS is just at the forefront, but really around TOMS was this community of amazing people who are doing things that could change the world. So that was the culture of the place, and that was how it felt to be there. And then for me, like after I went to Nepal for 10 days with the founders, my job was then to help them launch Eyewear. And so I was able to put together some documentary stuff that you can still find today. And then that role slowly evolved into me being overseeing all consumer facing videos, so all campaign stuff. And then the role evolved further to overseeing really all brand storytelling. So what was happening seasonally in the catalogs, partnership wise, brand book, really. So more of it was, we didn’t have any external agencies. So it was all internal. So there was kind of a creative services side of it. But then there was more of the kind of the thought leadership side of it as well. So we kind of had to straddle both lines, having it all be in the house.

So Justin, I had a question around challenger brands and eyewear, because Warby Parker, was this before or after TOMS introduced eyewear?

I think Warby was just after TOMS. Just after. Yeah, and Warby was amazing. And they really led with their giving in the beginning, but then they kind of moved more towards like the trying at home type messaging. So yeah, but they were, that energy was all around entrepreneurship at the time.

Yeah, I remember that. And I had a couple of pairs back when I wore glasses, and that was like a pretty revolutionary model as well, like trying on at home. And it’s just like, and you buy one, someone else gets one as well.

So yeah, they were super, they’re super disruptive. They had amazing infographics and communications. Like they were always somebody I looked to personally, but man, they’re, they’re doing great things. I loved what, the way they communicated their ideas.

Yeah. And the technology as well, like at the time, I remember you could try it on at home, literally with the tech and the camera and everything, and it’ll put on your face. This seems so basic now, but it was quite, quite new at the time.

Where you could-

The first like AR application. Yeah. Yeah.

You could see what it would look like and everything, and like move your head and it was all new and it was, yeah, definitely that’s why I bought with them.

Yeah. I think like what’s interesting about Werby and also about TOMS is yes, there’s giving incorporated, but it’s also disrupting industry, right? Like if you think about Werby, there’s Luxottica, there’s like two major eyewear companies, right? And so when you’re entering in that space, you have to do something distinctive. And TOMS, like we didn’t think of our competitors as being the Nikes or Sketchers or Adidas of the world, but we were introducing a silhouette of a shoe that is super interesting and fashionable, but also a business model that was really disrupted too. So I think sometimes people think about that era as a do-good era, but it was really a disruptive era when you’re challenging pre-conceived notions and patterns of business, and you’re doing it and modeling a new way. And so I think that’s the most, probably the lasting legacy of TOMS isn’t just the give back component or those that inspired, but it really is the idea of industry disruption, right? And say like, there could be a better model for capitalism. There could be a different way we think about how companies participate in social issues, et cetera. So it was quite revolutionary at the time and still has echoes throughout so many brands.

What would you call that, Justin? I mean, I would probably call that like a conscious capitalism. Would you be okay with that phrase, do you think? Or is there another phrase that you would sort of dub it?

That’s what it was referred to at the time. And so it was conscious capitalism is the way they thought about it and the way it was kind of branded at the time. I don’t know if there’s a more modern interpretation of it, but I’m open to it.

No, I don’t know. That’s the phrase that comes to my mind as you were talking about it. And look, we’ll come back to the TOMS story in a minute because I really want to dive in to some of the principles and the things that you learned. But just so that folks get a sense of what happened to you beyond TOMS, you know, let sort of give us the rest of the sort of story up until now, and then we’ll circle back around and perhaps pick apart some principles that I know you’ve probably applied throughout your career.

Sure. So while I was at TOMS, I sold a TV show with my writing partner that was on Legend’s first scripted television show he did. And that show didn’t get made, it got a lot of attention. And so we ended up, it got read around town and we ended up winning an open writing assignment to adapt this famous novel. And we won the assignment. And it was enough of a win for me to walk away from TOMS. And it was such a hard decision to make, but I’ve been building this career of both brand guy and entertainment guy. And we’re kind of top