TV Ads with a Social Conscience? Chrysler and Tom's Shoes Show the Way

Note: Article first published as TV Ads with a Social Conscience? Chrysler and Tom's Shoes Show the Way on Blogcritics.

From Blake Mycoskies bio on Tom's website. 

An article posted by AARP this week talked about a business that had found a way to connect consumers with a social conscience to a wonderful product. I had been aware of this small company for several years, but up until its commercial-within-a-commercial TV campaign, I had not been aware of the concept. It was pure genius on the part of some advertising agency.

Tom's Shoes
AT&T partnered with a small shoemaker, (Website informationTom's Shoes), which provided free shoes to children around the world. The young Blake Mycoskie saw a need for children's shoes in poverty-stricken communities and he was looking for a product he could sell. So he started a business based on this need and found a way to do it profitably. As I remember the business plan, he hired people in third world countries to make the shoes and marketed them with a tag line telling the consumer that every pair of shoes sold also included a pair of Tom's shoes for a barefoot child in a third-world community—a sort of two for one sale. Enter me, a lover of children, and you have a senior with a social conscience who is wearing a pair of Tom's shoes! That was back in 2009 and I still wear that original pair. Read more at Blog Critics Business....