By Emily Soccorsy

To those of you who (like me) regularly revert to the dream of an error-free, seamless life, I want to make a public service announcement: We cannot promise perfection. 

We cannot deliver perfection. 

Perfection does not exist. (Not a new idea but one that bears repeating as frequently as we recovering perfectionists can bear to utter it.)

What we can promise is authenticity. Maybe using the word “authenticity” is a cop-out for saying the truer thing, which may be…

What we can promise are mistakes. Missteps. Moments of misspeaking. Misalignments. Misses.

I wonder what would happen if we approached our relationships, what we do, with this bold proclamation: We promise we will make some mistakes. We will try our best to ensure they will be small ones, and we will commit to admitting to and rectifying them as soon as we humanly can. 

Would it build mistrust? Or have the opposite effect and give us a chance to form real bonds based on transparency, humanity, and a shared understanding that we are really working at something together?

And here’s another take: Mistakes are powerful. 

I have come to appreciate the power of mistakes. 

Mistakes give us all a chance to sit down and see things from a new perspective. They give us an entry point to restart from humility, which is a generative, open way to create again.  

This is a gift in life – the ability to forgive oneself and see the situation anew.

I am not perfect. I will never be a perfect leader, a perfect partner, a perfect mother. I won’t make every call exactly. 

I cannot promise that. I can only promise authenticity. I can offer, once we’ve established trust, vulnerability. (That might come in the form of an uncomfortable truth.)

This is actually at the heart of a healthy relationship – in any context.

As a brand strategist, communicator, guide and word alchemist, over the years I’ve run into people who want me to have all of the perfect answers. 

They seem to think expertise in an area equates to iron-clad, no-failure-possible approaches.

They want the perfect advice for their brand – or they look to me to accept or reject some advice they’ve gotten in the past about their brand and offer total certainty. 

This tendency may belie our culture’s shared appetite for perfection. 

While I am confident in our approach, philosophy, and practice, and while we remain clear on the outcomes we pursue, we don’t offer total certainty. No one in the branding or marketing space can. 

Branding and marketing is much more lab science, undertaken with a solid foundation and carried out through lots of experimentation, than it is mathematics. 

I can give you my impression, I can offer my take, which is grounded in what is real, true to my experience, and leans toward a long-term mindset rather than flash-in-the-pan tactics. I can craft a solid foundation and well-conceived experiments in gaining the attention of the ideal audience you wish to connect to. 

I can promise I will ask a lot of questions and, eventually, will have an informed, thoughtful and intentional approach that has proven effective in other cases. 

I can’t promise perfection. 

I can’t promise I have all the answers. 

If we choose to work together, I cannot promise we will do everything perfectly. I can promise we will iterate. And iteration means trying things, some of which don’t work. 

I can promise my team and I will leverage our shared desire to execute with our high standard of excellence. 

I can promise commitment. 

I can promise I will honor the journey and learn along the way. 

And this is, actually, the point of intrinsic branding. To establish a foundation that is very deeply rooted, one that we can grow together from, play with and experiment within.

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