TOMS Shoes One for One Campaign
Companies across the globe have offered to give to the international community with cause-marketing efforts. Oftentimes, companies encourage consumers to bring in a gently used item, such as clothing or shoes, and they in turn would donate it to a cause. But, few companies have gone as far as TOMS Shoes. While traveling in Argentina in 2006, TOMS Shoes Founder Blake Mycoskie witnessed the horrifying hardships faced by millions children growing up in poverty. He quickly realized that most of them struggled to go about their daily lives without shoes. With a desire to help the children, he created his own company to make a difference in the world. He decided that TOMS Shoes would match every pair of shoes purchased with a new pair of shoes for a child in need, somewhere in the world. He began this campaign with the name of One for One. This simple idea of a way to make a difference in the world has evolved into a powerful business foundation that addresses global concerns and advances the health, education and economic opportunity across the international community.
It seems as though the TOMS shoes company wants the world to incorporate the One for One campaign as something that is a part of everyday life, while manufacturing a new area where people can act as “good citizens.” People who buy products from TOMS are effectively acting as good citizens since shoes, sight, water, safe birth and bullying prevention services are provided to people in need upon every purchase.
More specifically, TOMS Shoes are always given to children through humanitarian organizations who incorporate shoes into their community development programs. The company success has been unbelievable since it has given over 45 million pairs of new shoes since 2007. TOMS Eyewear launched in 2011, and has helped restore sight to over 275,000 people in need. In 13 countries, sight has been given by providing prescription glasses, medical treatment and/or sight-saving surgery with each purchase of eyewear. To incorporate cleaner water resources, the TOMS Roasting Co. launched in 2014, and has helped provide over 67,000 weeks of safe water in 6 countries. With each purchase of TOMS Roasting Co. Coffee, they work with their own Giving Partners to provide a one week supply to a person in need. Since they continually support the creation of sustainable water systems, they have managed to provide entire communities with access to safe water, which has led to improved health, increased economic productivity, job creation and access to education. In 2015, TOMS Bag Collection launched in 4 countries. With every bag purchased, TOMS helps to provide a safe birth for a mother and baby in need.
Pertaining primarily to the works of Schudson, Crowley, and Hawee, the Toms advertisement calls on their audience’s civic learning, addresses a prevalent issue, and effectively uses intrinsic proofs and modes of persuasion. As we look to the text and examples presented while examining this advertisement, it becomes obvious that Toms calls upon the civic duties of its audience and addresses a prevalent issue that they need help to solve. Schudson advocated for the referencing of the audience’s learned civic duty. This Toms advertisement puts that practice into action by referencing the practices of voting and donating blood. These practices are already a part of the American way of life and many take “giving” quite seriously, as a civic engagement opportunity.
There is a clear relationship between ancient and modern rhetoric that is even visible in advertisements that appear on billboards, in cities and in publications. TOMS Shoes manages to appeal to the logos, pathos and ethos of society as a whole, in a variety of ways. These methods have always been standard and effective modes of persuasion.
The appeal to the pathos of everyday Americans is evident in its typeface and color. As explained in Chapter 6 of our text about the visual modes of communication, “the qualities of polished and professional are valued in our day and place,” especially when consumers are making purchases. An important visual mode is the appearance of clean cut text, which is a quality that this advertisement bestows with its rigid and clean text in a blank, black background. The creator petitions the audience’s emotions and evokes their feelings by emphasizing the phrase of “to a child in need” with the ability to reach sympathetic members of its audience, using bold print. That phrase, on the advertisement, is larger in size that anything else at the bottom. It increases the feeling of need to help protect the well-being of innocent children. Citizens feel the emotion of how it feels to help others in that every TOMS purchase supports improved health, access to education and confidence building around the world. Vision is one of the most important parts of learning and education. A large problem in our country was pointed out on the TOMS website, “Each year in the United States, two million children suffer from uncorrected refractive errors. Eighty percent of what a child learns in his or her first 12 years of life is through vision. For many students, the gift of sight means improved access to education or the ability to perform better in school.” When citizens hear about this along with the company name of TOMS, they article continue to have that appeal because of the way that the company is making such a difference even at home in the United States. Also, in Chapter 6 of our text, the relationship between pathos and color was analyzed to come to the assumption that how people respond to colors depends on the contexts in which they see the colors. The black background and white text can be seen as hard and loud to the audience.
In this advertisement, there is an appeal to the audience’s logos as well. This is suggested that one can cause a large amount of good in communities, on the local and national level. At lot of this goes along with the context. For some without much knowledge about TOMS Shoes, including what was previously mentioned, there wouldn’t be as much of an appeal with logos. Also, our text analyzes the logos of arranging visual elements in the way that the author of the poster, TOMS Shoes, shaped someone else’s attention by using an actual TOMS shoe as the center of the advertisement to stress its important and what it can do for the world, persuading them to take the action. This visual composition has a limited number of elements so that the audience isn’t overwhelmed by detail and can see the point of the advertisement. The visual hierarchy is obvious with the last, valuable piece of information about making a difference at the bottom as it all makes one argument.
Aristotle often wrote that ethos consists of three sub-parts that include good moral character, good sense and good will. Usually, ethos is associated with character of the speaker or writer, which in this case is TOMS Shoes. Today, Americans are persuaded by people they trust, even if the argument is not terribly strong. In this ad, the argument is strong using both the trust and commonplace aspects of the ethos of average citizens. American citizens tend to have strong ethos and Toms manages to address that well by pointing out other forms of civic duty and good citizenship. This behavior is assumed and considered to be commonplace in this great nation. By comparing the purchase of a pair of Toms to voting and giving blood in this advertisement, they have even more appeal to the American people because those acts have been and always will be important parts of our American identity and ideology.