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Is social Good always a good branding?
- Azra Bayraktar
- Oct 10
- 6 min read
Updated: Oct 15
HOW TO FORMULATE YOUR SOCIAL CAUSE FOR A GOOD BRANDING
Is social Good always a good branding?
This question should be at the heart of all cause-related brands to provide their sustainable growth and resilience in the long run. Miltenburg (2017, p.21) challenged the readers in her book ``Brand The Change`` with this question.
For many social entrepreneurs, putting their social cause at the top of their brand promise could be an understandable move; however, if you only build your brand on the social aspect, this won`t be enough. You must also find an additional multivalued approach.
If you are a bank and would like to focus on the people with low income, what makes you different in your products than other banks? Are your offerings better than the competitors? Are you offering the lowest rates or free personal finance classes? You must think about your social impact together with your differentiation point. Miltenburg (2017, pp.21-22).
A good example is here SOKO company, given also in the Miltenburgs book as an example, who support the artisans and women's power in Kenya, which is their social cause, but also their jewelry design is the differentiating point. They also built a virtual factory model where they can reach the mobile artisans. The jewelry is 24k gold-plated recycled brass, and the colored products are made with locally sourced recycled glass. So, they can ensure the product quality here.
Not only in their products, but they also specialize in their supply chain system using mobile phones to connect independent artisan entrepreneurs directly to their team and global customers, which allows artisans to receive orders and payment. The virtual factory standardizes manufacturing and enables artisan leaders with the tools and resources to preserve and improve heritage techniques to scale.
They focused here also on other problems than promotion and branding only, like the 4 P`s of Marketing: Place and Price, and tried to solve a supply chain challenge by implementing online solutions for payment and ordering (Soko, Impact).
TOM`s Shoes and their Challenge:
If we were talking about brand activism and social good, for many years, TOMS shoes were the most important brand in this field. This brand was shown as a sample in the Brand Activism book of Chris du Toit, too (Du Toit, p. 192). The owner and the creator of the brand, Blake Mycoskie, invented the one for one model in 2006 and donated for each pair of shoes another pair to children in need.
Source: Mycoskie, 2016 " Ten years of giving together"
Since then, they donated more than 1 million shoes and continue to donate 1/3 of their profit to organizations like Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, Brave Trails, and Girl Forward. Their B Corp Scores are improving, and they are publishing their impact report to be transparent for their shareholders.
However, the company has been criticized lately because of its strategic problems. At the beginning, their One-to-one model was very popular and understandable for the Western communities, and the brand was built on this philanthropic model. Unfortunately, this model came under fire because donating all the shoes may undercut the local market in these countries, and many companies started to copy this model immediately. (Miltenburg, 2017, p. 21). During COVID, many people stopped buying footwear. The younger generation preferred more sneakers; although they offered new models, they were not so competitive. The company struggled with financial problems, and they hired Magnus Wedhammar, a former Nike and Converse executive, to change the situation (BOF, 2021; Ames, 2024).
Another example, which focused only on a social cause and neglected the demands and preferences, was the Nano car from the TATA Group. The car has been offered to the market for 1500 USD as the cheapest car, so even the poorest can afford a car (Miltenburg, 2017, p.21). However, the sales figures were only 275000 units. But they calculated 250000 cars per year (AutoScout). The Tata group also claimed the Image of the cheapest car in the world was wrong. No one wanted to buy a car for poor people.
BEST ONLINE BANKING CASE FOR AFRICA:
The opposite example, with the right product and right targeting and positioning, was the online payment system in Kenya, M-Pesa, targeting customers with small accounts. The Company in Kenya treated their target group very well with world-class service and Apps, having 30 million customers in 2017 and now over 80 million. Created a successful online banking for everyone (Miltenburg, 2017, p. 21).
M-PESA was introduced to the African market in 2007 as an online banking app and platform for Kenya, and today it is available across 8 countries, with Safaricom, Vodacom, and Vodafone providing services in Kenya, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Ghana. More than 60 million customers use M-PESA in a month, creating an ecosystem that connects them to more than 950,000 merchants and 5 million businesses, more than 60,000 developers, and more than 600,000 agents. Customers and businesses on M-PESA can send and receive money and make and receive business payments within the country and across the world through global partnerships. They empowered affordable access to useful financial services for more than 60 million customers and 5 million businesses. This makes their brand unique.
With the help of M-PESA, up to 84% of the population has achieved formal financial inclusion. They offered their customers and businesses with affordable access to credit, savings propositions, wealth management, and other financial services (https://www.m-pesa.africa/about-us)
Yoni. care:
Yoni is another example of a brand with a cause, also a good example of how to make successful cooperations with related brands.
Yoni case is an environmentally friendly sanitary product with a contemporary, sexy, confident women's vibe. The product is 100% chemical-free, but it also created a platform around the issue of women's health, an open discussion platform about the problems of periods, knowledge about menstruation, and how to take better care of yourself. Not only does the product offer a health option for women they also created a game-changer platform where you can see different women who are game changers in their fields to inspire other women.
One of these Game Changers is Nancy Poleon. She. She is selected as a game changer who created a company, brandedu.nl, where she is coaching and helping women to make them more visible with their talents.
What YONI also made was another cooperation with REDLOCKER
They work together with offices and schools to enable a stress-free and healthy menstruation period for women.
Redlocker was another company created by the founders, Liza Eriksson and Clara Lidman started this Project of dispensers of free period products at schools and public places as a high school Project in 2019. This school Project became a global movement for menstrual equity.
The two founders convinced five investors in 2021 on Sweden's Shark Tank (Draknästet). Today, the Redlocker dispensers are located in more than 4000 public places in Europe, like schools, companies like Volvo, H&M, and McDonald's. With their subscription models, the members can rent dispensers and receive regular product refills from companies like YONI. (Forbes, 2025). Redlocker offers also additional services like educational projects, sponsorships (where corporate customers can support schools and sports clubs with products and installations) lectures and events about create the conditions for everyone to have the right to work on equal terms without having problems during their the periods without create their own pads out of toilet paper, if they do not have their period products with them, have to stop to look for the nearest shops or even have to go home because of their period.
The two young GEN Z founders have also been selected to the Forbes 30 Under 30 for their groundbreaking movement for menstrual equity and installing the first-ever dispenser for free menstrual products.
Besides their social impact and a wonderful example of a cause-related product, they focused on a cooperation to create a community around their brand and to make others also be part of their movement, as we mentioned `` Call to action``.
These were a couple of good examples for brands with a social cause and good brand creation strategies. In our next blog articles, I would like to focus mainly on the strategy of this brand creation process again, with the help of Miltenburg's book "Brand the Change".
Azra Bayraktar 2025.
References
Ames, Cory (2024): ``What Happened to TOMS Shoes: The Death of the Buy-One-Give-One Model, retrieved from, https://coryames.com/what-happened-to-toms/, https://youtube/pqR26NiE0Lo.
Du Toit Chris (2013)UBMM PISBN: 978-0-9976635-0-1: ``Brand Activism Inc.`` 2013
BOF 2021: ``What Ever Happened to Toms Shoes?` retrieved on 11 September 2025, from https://www.businessoffashion.com/news/retail/what-ever-happened-to-toms-shoes/
Forbes: F Profile, Redlocker: retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/profile/redlocker/?list=30under30-europe-social-impact/ on 25 September 2025.
Liu, Katherina (2024): ``M-PESA success shows importance of competition in payments``, 18 March 2024, https://www.omfif.org/2024/03/m-pesa-success-shows-importance-of-competition-in-payments/#:~:text=The%20Central%20Bank%20of%20Kenya's,comprising%2025m%20mobile%20money%20users.
Miltenburg, A.: ``The Brand Change``, BIS Publishers, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2017, ISBN: 978-90-63947-8-4.
Mycoskie, Blake: (May 5, 2016): "Ten Years of giving together", retrieved from https://medium.com/blake-mycoskie-toms/ten-years-of-giving-together-6fccee01bbb1.
Poleon, Nancy: Brandedu, https://brandedu.nl/
Soko (Impact): retrieved from https://shopsoko.com/pages/about-our-impact, on September 11, 2025.
TOMS Shoes: https://www.toms.com/en-us?srsltid=AfmBOopOUMamSHyfbnwpOh2XQELdpDxZ9DkHae8R7m8HuK1siZOninVJ
Yoni: Game Changers: retrieved from https://yoni.care/de/game-changers/ on 15 September 2025.
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