Buy a Shoe, Give a Shoe
May 16, 2007
It seems in the creative industry that we get so busy thinking about our clients that we often overlook ourselves. That has happened at my current employer. We have neglected ourselves because we have become “slaves to the urgent”. From a practical, logical standpoint it makes sense that we do work for the people responsible for allowing us to put food on our tables. Typically the reward for good work is more work. Add those things together and it’s easy to forget to think about your own look, brand, identity, website, etc. You can easily fall into the dreaded “we rarely update our website” realm.
So what’s a company to do? Well, we decided to hire ourselves. And to that end we took the day off today to get away from the office and take a look at who we are, who we want to be, where we’re going, what we need to do to get there, etc. Basically we asked ourselves all the questions that we ask our clients. It was really interesting and should lead to an improved identity.
So what about the shoes?
Long story short, the facilitator of the meeting asked everyone on the team to wear an old pair of shoes in. We were asked to take them off and throw them in a pile – this symbolized where we’ve been. As a company that cares about cause, we were then told that these shoes would be given to charity. After a few people got over the shock of losing their favorite lawn mowing shoes and realized that there are people in the world who don’t even have shoes, we were presented with a new pair of shoes. These aren’t just any shoes, these are shoes that are changing lives. They’re called Tom’s Shoes. Basically, if you buy a pair of Tom’s, they will give a pair of shoes to a child that doesn’t have shoes. It’s a sweet story and a sweet mission. (the shoes are slightly odd, but it feels good to help someone less fortunate and to be part of a bigger story). Check them out, buy a pair, feel good.