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Root + River

a beliefs-based branding strategic consulting team

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Why should we come back to you?

May 14, 2020 By Emily + Justin

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 ...

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Filed Under: Beliefs-Based Branding

Why Branding Matters in the Face of the Unthinkable

May 4, 2020 By Jennifer Lawhead

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 ...

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Filed Under: Story

Humans of Marketing: Stop the Madness

April 20, 2020 By Emily + Justin

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 ...

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Filed Under: Humanistic Marketing

Will Marketing Still Matter?

April 1, 2020 By Emily + Justin

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 ...

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Filed Under: Beliefs-Based Branding

Don’t Go Dark

March 23, 2020 By Emily + Justin

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 ...

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Filed Under: Beliefs-Based Branding

Our Love Challenge for You

March 23, 2020 By Emily + Justin

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 + ...

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Filed Under: Beliefs-Based Branding

A Word, Please

March 16, 2020 By Emily + Justin

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 ...

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Filed Under: Beliefs-Based Branding

Your beliefs are NOT separate from the business

March 9, 2020 By Emily + Justin

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 ...

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Filed Under: Beliefs-Based Branding

Why We Always ‘Love Them Where They’re At’

February 24, 2020 By Emily + Justin

  “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 ...

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Filed Under: Intrinsic Branding

Mission Statements Suck

February 10, 2020 By Emily + Justin

They don’t suck because they are a bad idea or because they don’t carry within them sound notions around why you are doing what you do.  They suck because they are often crafted as a matter of rote, because a book or a consultant told you to create one, so you jammed together a bunch of ideas and wrote one, then shoved it into a document, a folder, a file and put it away. Or, perhaps, you hung ...

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Filed Under: Intrinsic Branding

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Co-Founder @emilyatlarge was recently asked about ...

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Co-Founder @emilyatlarge was recently asked about intentions.“No words came to me,” she writes. “Instead, my heart filled, my mind flooded with emotional visuals, forms and feelings blending seamlessly into one another. (This is how most important ideas begin within me.)”Read more about why she doesn’t do resolutions and her unique process for setting intentions. Link in bio

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In the years I spent as part of a fundamentalist ...

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In the years I spent as part of a fundamentalist church, “Grow where you’re planted” was a common trope. It was typically used as an admonishment to someone’s complaining about their circumstances, writes @fosterthinking.The phrase is an adapted relic of survival. While its roots are in hope, it’s usage in contemporary times encourages hopelessness, he continues.Visit the link in bio to read Justin’s three tips if you’re stuck in a survival situation or mindset.

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For those of you who are new here, welcome! We’d...

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For those of you who are new here, welcome! We’d love to share a little bit about who we are.We are a team of four (from left): Jen, Justin, Emily and Cat. Our mission is to inspire others to go inward. We are the founders of intrinsic branding, the practice of building your brand from the inside out. No cheesy gimmicks or taglines allowed in our work.A few more facts about us: We are defiers. Each of us have stories about going against the status quo, shaking up the stale and trying new things.  We are teachers. Our team loves guiding others, teaching new concepts and freely sharing what we know. Plus, Cat was an actual teacher earlier in her career! We are a silly bunch. Ask Justin about his library of Dad jokes.Drop us a line below to say hi and ask us a question.Photo credit: Jean Laninga
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We believe all great brands are spiritual experiences. Branding is an experience that will change you. It will shift the borders of your thinking and give you a practical framework for how to collectively carry the brand forward.

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