We believe every great brand is a spiritual experience. A movement. A brand is the only place in business where your inner world is experienced by the outer world. For too long, we have accepted the belief that these worlds are supposed to be separate. We say no. When these worlds are kept separate, dissonance occurs. Identity crises emerge. Leaders drift from the mission. Employees feel ...
How Branding Led to a $8M Revenue Increase
By Jennifer Lawhead We always say, “a strong brand solves a thousand business problems.” When a business moves away from obsessing about bottom lines, profitability and ROI, and instead adopts a brand-centric mindset, it fundamentally changes the fabric of the business. Suddenly, financial milestones are reached; not because a CEO fixated on them, but because the quality of the brand became ...
Why should we come back to you?
Soon, people will be making decisions. The decisions will be about what work they choose to do, what schools they will send their children back to, what places they want to eat at and shop at and gather at. They will be deciding how to re-engage with the world. Will they be re-engaging with you and your brand? The decision-making filter that existed before the pandemic, which would have ...
Why Branding Matters in the Face of the Unthinkable
By Jennifer Lawhead It wasn’t their first rodeo, but in terms of cancelling, it was definitely their first rodeo. In the first weeks of March 2020, as the nation was just beginning to consider shutting down, Rodeo Austin faced a seemingly impossible decision: cancel its entire lineup filled with live music acts, a popular livestock show, a carnival and more, or try to press on, even though other ...
Humans of Marketing: Stop the Madness
In the best of times being a director of marketing and communication is kind of like holding your ground in the center of a tornado. You must watch carefully where you step. And while it is relatively calm in the eye, every other thing is hurtling, very near, at dangerous speeds. A misplaced step might pick you and your day or week up, sending you swirling along with all that is whipping ...
Will Marketing Still Matter?
No. And yes. Crisis reveals pretense. So the days of hardcore, tone-deaf, insistent and interruptive marketing are over. That kind of marketing does not matter now. It doesn’t matter to the extent that marketing with old ways in this new world will do more harm to a brand than not marketing at all. By harm we mean: if you market with pretense, with disregard for human beings, with a ...
Don’t Go Dark
In times like these, there is a tendency to hunker down and wait for it to blow over, to get mired in fear over what to say and say nothing. We beg you, please don’t do that. The world needs your voice and spirit. The ability to communicate is a great gift, one of the most profound ever unwrapped by humankind. The ability to communicate in a crisis connects the gap between great gain and ...
Our Love Challenge for You
When our team of four met in a charming Austin bungalow on our summer retreat of 2016, we decided it was time to reevaluate our values. Which ones still resonated deep within our core? Which ones now felt off or needed revisiting? It’s a practice we do often, and we recommend for any business: revisit your values often to make sure they continue to hit you in the heart. In that season of Root + ...
A Word, Please
This is not another post about COVID-19. This is about you. It’s to issue a clear and kind “hello” to your soul in the midst of chaos and uncertainty. We see you! We feel you. We love you. These are kooky times to be living in, aren’t they? You likely feel wobbly and concerned and fearful. And all of this unknowing! When will it end? What’s going to happen next? Am I safe? Are my loved ...
Your beliefs are NOT separate from the business
Beliefs, as a component of brands, are one of those good news/bad news stories. Good news: as business leaders, we’ve evolved. We recognize a business needs a deeper set of values to help it withstand the test of time. Beliefs help us grow as leaders, grow revenue and grow our teams in the ways that serve the business. As a result of this dawning awareness, it is now common practice for ...
Why We Always ‘Love Them Where They’re At’
“I haven’t made any progress since we last met,” a former client said to us when she came to a recent Root + River event. Her shoulders lowered slightly as she spoke. She went on to share all of the milestones she hadn’t hit yet. Her website wasn’t yet live. She hadn’t used her carefully crafted Root Belief yet in conversations. She knew she was months away from sharing her thought ...