For many years, Life Is Good’s marketing strategy was as simple as the homespun nature of the business itself.

From the beginning, John and Bert Jacobs, the apparel company’s founders—who started selling T-shirts on the streets of Boston and in college dorms in 1994—enjoyed bringing people together. The brand hosted events including pumpkin festivals and music festivals, where people could soak up the positive vibes—and grab some merch.

What they didn’t do much of was traditional advertising.

“For the first 20 years or so, the business was very much word of mouth,” said John Jacobs.

“It was rough around the edges, which is kind of how we’ve always been,” added Bert Jacobs. “Every time we went to agencies and talked about something more professional, it got too glossy.”

Their indifference to advertising, though, has slowly been wearing off. The brand just released its 2024 holiday commercial—only its second commercial ever, after last year’s holiday spot—running on streaming platforms including Netflix, Peacock, Hulu, Paramount+, Tubi and Roku. Life is Good has also been doing more advertising year-round through search, paid social and digital, print and more mediums. The company spent $4.25 million on U.S. measured media in 2023, per Vivvix, including paid social data from Pathmatics.

Ad Age spoke with the Jacobs brothers about the evolution of their marketing, the creative approach to the new holiday spot—featuring a visitor from another planet—their thoughts on purpose-based work (as one of the pioneering brands in the space) and how the brand has worked over the years to better articulate the real meaning behind “Life Is Good.”

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

When did you first realize advertising might be good—even necessary—for the business?

Bert Jacobs: We always looked at transactional advertising as something to avoid, because it seemed like the world was so noisy with that. We don’t want to bother somebody who’s never gone fishing in their life with a T-shirt about fishing. But with the level of information you have these days, you can reach someone who’s in that world. It’s less intrusive. 

The other thing that happened was, between 1994 and 2008, we grew from zero to $117 million [in revenue]. Then the Great Recession hit. For several years, our business was going in the wrong direction. We realized we didn’t really know how to manage a $100 million business. It’s the kind of thing founders never want to admit. But it dawned on us to go hire people who’ve been places we haven’t and who can help really lead the business.

I think we’ve done a terrific job of hiring people who understand the brand and understand the value system and the integration of social work with our for-profit business, but also know, capitalistically, how to drive a business. And advertising is part of that.

You said agencies over the years often didn’t understand those values. Can you elaborate on that? What are those values, exactly?

Bert Jacobs: Today we describe ourselves as a positive lifestyle brand. We always think it’s kind of funny when somebody says this or that is becoming a lifestyle brand. To say you’re a lifestyle brand doesn’t really describe anything. Being a drug addict is a lifestyle. So it needs an adjective. We were the original positive lifestyle brand.

John Jacobs: Our mission is to spread the power of optimism. Bert and I had a very inspiring figure in our life—our mom, who handled some great adversity and somehow accessed playfulness, optimism, joy, music, storytelling, physical play. She brought that optimistic spirit, and we applied it to the bootstrap years of a lot of rejection, selling shirts in the dorms for five years, sleeping in a van.

But the biggest breakthrough was when we started getting letters from our customers—people going through difficult experiences who found a lift from Life Is Good: “I wore my Life Is Good hat during chemo,” “We all wore Life Is Good tees to the memorial service for our brother because he lived that way.” We were like, oh my God, this is so much more than simply having gratitude for simple pleasures.

This ability to focus more energy on the positives in life—it actually helps you power through the hardest challenges. That’s really what the brand is about. To us, it’s not “life is easy” or “life is perfect.” It’s “life is good”—if you’re able to access this positive mindset. We probably didn’t articulate that well in the early years, though, so I don’t really blame the agencies.

Bert Jacobs: We also just recognized early on that T-shirts are a great vehicle for communication. Life Is Good means something. It says a lot about who people are on the inside. That depth that John’s talking about—that was always more important to us than being cutting edge with fashion or any of that. 

John Jacobs: We love seeing the Life Is Good sticker on a beat-up old car, because you know they got the deeper message. Especially people that have been through some difficulty, which is most humans.

Last year’s holiday spot feels like it tried to fit everything the company stands for into 30 seconds. That must have been tricky.

John Jacobs: Yeah, we felt like we needed to give the baseline philosophy in 30 seconds. We had a lot of animated graphics, and we landed on our main philosophy and our nonprofit. [Life Is Good donates 10 percent of annual net profits to the Life is Good Kids Foundation to help children.] It packed a lot in, which liberated us this year to lean more toward the humor and fun and levity.

Tell us about this year’s spot.

John Jacobs: We’re not-so-mildly obsessed with creatures such as aliens and Sasquatch. Perhaps a therapist can get at that! The spot is really about the positive connections our tees help to make, which we hear a lot from customers. Most people can relate to a home scene like that, too, whatever role you’re playing—parent, kid, perhaps alien. 

Bert Jacobs: I think the ad also speaks to the social work we do. We work with kids that face psychological trauma from things like poverty and violence. Children explore the world and grow and learn through play. One of the things that’s interesting about human beings is, as we get older, we tend to become less playful. But the most fun and interesting people maintain a childlike playfulness. So, the ad is very silly and playful.

John Jacobs: The way the parents are initially hesitant [about inviting the alien into the home] but the kid’s all in immediately.

Both scripts [for the 2023 and 2024 spots] came from our squad in-house. We worked with [production company] Sweet Rickey [and director Brett Karley]. It’s great for our creative teams, too. We’re an art house. We create art all the time. [Advertising] has given them a whole new medium to put their creative energy into, and the teams had a blast with these ads.

Lastly, I’m curious how you feel about purpose-based advertising. You got into it early on. Some of the companies doing it now—does it feel inauthentic to you? More of a tactic than a real value?

Bert Jacobs: For some companies, it is just a marketing ploy. But the good news is, more and more companies out there truly believe business can be a force for good. When we started, we got in touch with Ben & Jerry’s and Newman’s Own because they were some of the only ones out there. We admired them and wanted to talk with them. Today, there are thousands and thousands of businesses that integrate some kind of social work into their business.

Capitalism, in our opinion, falls prey to greed and all kinds of weaknesses, but it has also developed sanitation systems and cured diseases. We actually believe the natural path of capitalism is to solve problems. I’m not disputing what you said, but we don’t burn a lot of energy on that. Today there’s a lot of momentum around the idea that businesses can authentically do good things. 

This is also the first time in the history of free enterprise where consumers are voting with their dollars for what they believe in and don’t believe in. That means supporting businesses, like ours, that are trying—not that are perfect—but are trying to do the right thing. Giving $1 out of every $10 to kids who need it—that’s meaningful to people. And from a capitalistic standpoint, it’s actually growing our business. That wasn’t the strategy in the beginning, but we’ll take it.