S08.EP16 - Does Purpose Really Sell? The TOMS Story with Justin Herber

JUST Branding

Justin Herber joins Just Branding to trace his journey from Hollywood filmmaking to leading brand strategy at TOMS and Tractor Beverage, exploring how

Key takeaways

• Justin Herber transitioned from post-production filmmaking to becoming an early brand leader at TOMS after being invited to help launch their iWear product line.
• TOMS pioneered the one-for-one model by integrating charitable giving directly into its for-profit operations, proving that business could drive long-term societal impact without relying on traditional foundations.

Main topics

• Purpose-driven branding and conscious capitalism
• TOMS one-for-one business model evolution

Notable quotes

The more daylight there is between your marketing message and your purpose, the more fractured the brand is going to be.

Conclusion

The episode delivers actionable frameworks for founders seeking to embed purpose into their core

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) I always say that the more daylight there is between your marketing message and your purpose, the more fractured the brand is going to be. So if founders are thinking about purpose driven or belief system as a marketing layer or brand layer, it's the thing is going to fracture, right? So it has to be part of organizational design. And a lot of times the purpose may not be super clear in the beginning, but it oftentimes lives with the founder. Speaker 1 (0:28) Hello and welcome to Just Branding. Speaker 1 (0:32) a podcast dedicated to helping designers and entrepreneurs grow brands. Here are your hosts, Jacob Kass and Matt Davies. Speaker 4 (0:47) Before we jump in, if you're serious about mastering branding and building a thriving creative business, the Brand Builders Alliance is for you. Inside, you'll get live masterclasses, mentorship from our eight resident coaches, a stacked resource vault, and a global network of brand builders who actually get it. If you're done winging it alone and are ready to scale with structure, support, and serious momentum, head over to joinbba.com and get on the wait list. That's joinbba.com. Speaker 3 (1:21) 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. Tom's 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 Heber, 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 Tom's, where he helped shape 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 Speaker 5 (3:05) is such a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me, guys. Speaker 3 (3:08) Oh, it's great to have you on. I'm excited. We've been sort of talking back and forth for a few months now. And 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, right? Particularly one that's purpose-driven. And 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, like, what connects those two worlds? Speaker 5 (3:36) There's so much. overlap between the two worlds. And it's kind of not what I would normally see. To me, I think the biggest connective 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 kind of tension 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? And 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 Speaker 5 (4:34) seamless translation, but the language is a little different in each one. Speaker 3 (4:39) I love how you mentioned tension, right? 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 let's, well, tell us the story. You started off in Hollywood and obviously we've mentioned you went to Tom's and you've done a bunch of other stuff. Perhaps give us a potted history. Speaker 5 (5:00) 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 art 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 Bay's, his editing house. And from there, I got introduced to Michael Bay's team and then became Michael Bay's creative assistant. Project, 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 out 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 Tom's. 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, Tom's 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. Speaker 3 (7:25) Right. So just for folks who perhaps don't know, much about Tom's. You mentioned one for one. Do you mind explaining to everyone what that idea was? Sure. Speaker 5 (7:35) So the founder of Tom's 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 for every pair he sold, he would give to somebody in need. So they called it Tom's 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 going to challenge the way we think about the role of business in society. And I think that was what really beyond the... 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. Speaker 3 (8:37) And they're still doing it now, aren't they? I think one for one. Speaker 5 (8:40) Yeah. So they've evolved 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 Speaker 3 (9:02) for profit, the company, right? Speaker 5 (9:04) 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 Speaker 3 (9:27) magic of it all. So when you arrive at Tom's, 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. Speaker 5 (9:40) 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 me 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, iWear, 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. Speaker 3 (10:33) You've been to Nepal, Jacob, and you're a very well-traveled man. Speaker 4 (10:37) Yes, I have. There's a lot of hiking around there. Yeah, cool place. There we are. Recommend it? Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. Speaker 3 (10:43) Jacob's our like resident traveler like I've traveled a Speaker 4 (10:47) little Speaker 3 (10:47) bit. Speaker 4 (10:47) Thanks Speaker 3 (10:47) traveler Matt. Speaker 4 (10:48) We've got four Muppets now. Speaker 3 (10:50) Oh yeah. Rarely leave the Speaker 4 (10:51) house. Speaker 3 (10:51) I Speaker 5 (10:52) mean Speaker 3 (10:52) it's Speaker 5 (10:56) a journey to get there right. It's like 30 hours of travel from Los Angeles where Tom's is based. Speaker 4 (11:00) 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 beautiful. place in the world yeah Speaker 5 (11:11) the entrepreneur range this is amazing it's an incredible place to be were Speaker 3 (11:15) you filming there justin then at that early point and so telling the story from the from the founders what they were doing documenting i guess and then so you then went to work for toms for a while how first of all next question was when was that roughly so Speaker 5 (11:28) 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 Tom's. 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. You know, this is sort of your Obama era aspirational, like optimistic millennial, right? So everything was about how do you create a better world? And so Tom's is just at the forefront, but really around Tom's 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 over, overseeing all consumer facing videos, 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-house. Speaker 4 (13:23) So Justin, I had a question around challenger brands and eyewear. Warby Parker, was this before or after Tom's introduced iWear? Speaker 5 (13:32) I think Warby was just after Tom's. And Speaker 4 (13:34) so Speaker 5 (13:34) they had, 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 Speaker 4 (13:43) messaging. Speaker 5 (13:44) So yeah, but they were, it was all, that energy was all around entrepreneurship at the time. Speaker 4 (13:50) 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, Speaker 5 (14:02) they were super, they're super disruptive. They had amazing infographics and communications. Like they were always somebody I look to personally, but man, they're, they're doing great things. I loved what, the way they communicated their ideas. Yeah. Speaker 4 (14:15) And the technology as well. Like at the time I remember. you could try it on at home, literally with their tech and the camera and everything and put on your face. This seems so basic now, but it was quite, quite new at the time where you could personally 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. Speaker 5 (14:37) I think like what's interesting about where we and also about Tom's is yes, there's giving incorporated, but it's also disrupting industry,