Rooting Up:
Essays on Modern Branding

BY EMILY SOCCORSY + JUSTIN FOSTER

The rise of branding has produced more questions than answers.

This book answers the most important questions.

The 21st century has brought with it the now-ubiquitous idea of brand. But definitions run the gamut, which has produced more questions than answers.

Emily Soccorsy and Justin Foster have been answering these questions for thousands of leaders in their respective careers.

Rooting Up is a compilation of 44 thought-provoking essays written over the course of three years. Rooting Up is a sharing of their audacious and heretical ideas on how to become a brand in a new world and in a new era of business. Rooted in timeless principles, brain science, and a spirit of individuality, Rooting Up forges a new path to branding that challenges stale leadership practices, fear-based marketing, and other old habits leaders have accumulated over the last century. Rooting Up is an introduction to intrinsic branding, an invitation to look inward, and inspiration for confidently showing the world your true brand.

Rooting Up’s essays are comprised of three themes;

each of which answers questions and provide clarity about what a brand and branding really is.

  • Branding Birds & Bees – Like babies, brands don’t come from a magical stork. This section lays out the basics of branding; creating a level set from which to view your brand with fresh eyes and a beginner’s mind.
  • Leading is Branding – Whether you are aware of it or not, how you lead is your brand. This section shares insights on how you treat yourselves and others inevitably become part of the culture and customer experience.
  • New World Marketing – marketing isn’t rocket science. It’s clarity of message delivered consistently over time. This section provides inspiration and insight on how to understand marketing in a new way and conquer obstacles to success.

This section shares insights on how the way you treat yourselves and others inevitably becomes part of the culture and customer experience.

Ready to dig into your brand’s root system and challenge how you think about branding?

Rooting Up will be your trusty guide to territories unknown.

Excerpts from the book

​“The humans who make up your brand are your brand. How they treat the work they do for your brand is a direct reflection of how you treat them.”

“Humans have been conditioned to believe that anxiety automatically means something is wrong. We see it differently, especially for entrepreneurs. Anxiety is there to tell us something important has come on to our radar that needs your special attention.”

“Perfection is a myth. Worse than that, our belief in perfection creates a cancer inside of us, and inside of our organizations.”

Purchasing for a group?

Written to spur conversation, Rooting Up can serve as a marketing and branding levelset and discussion starter for your leadership team, your mastermind group or your marketing team.

  • 11 – 25 copies: $12 each
  • 26 – 50 copies: $10 each
  • 51 – 100 copies: $8 each
  • Want to order more than 100? Let’s make a deal!

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Emily + Justin co-founded Root + River in early 2015, as an intrinsic branding practice.

Together, their mission is to inspire leaders to go inward to uncover their brands. A new, more humanistic and experiential age has dawned, based on the idea that branding is how other people experience what you believe. Using their prowess with language, presentation, artful visuals and defiantly simple strategy, Emily and Justin push people to break apart what they think branding is, only to rebuild it in a more organic and true manner. This is their first book together.