Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Emily Soccorsy. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Emily, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

Several years ago a large tech company approached us and asked us to throw our hat in for an RFP project that was really only tangentially related to our expertise area – brand language and strategy. As we started having internal and external conversations about the project, it became more clear that we were not an exact fit for the type of work they were looking to do. We could have stumbled our way through it, but it felt out of integrity with who we are and our work. So, we decided to gracefully step out of consideration. The CMO was stunned. But, a year later, he sought us out for an even larger project that was totally aligned with what we do best. He said he could not stop thinking about the team that had enough courage and conviction to tell him no and to hold to what they approach.

This highlights how deeply convicted we are about the work we do. While we love our clients, we’re also willing to push back, to challenge them and to stay committed to a deep dive into the soul of the brand language and strategy. This diverges from the industry standard because far too often brand strategy is treated by agencies like a quick pit stop on the way to the highway to more profit-generating marketing services. As a result, the foundational work of the brand does not go deep enough and tends to be focused on current circumstances.

It is not rooted in the deepest intentions and beliefs of the leaders and the organization, which only change minimally over time. Therefore, it often ends up being a temporary and an unstable foundation for the brand’s enduring differentiation.

We are not an agency. We are experts in the foundational language of the brand and focus on uncovering, refining and articulating the root system so it can be an enduring differentiator for the brand.

Our intention is to guide a deep, immersive experience of uncovering and refining the brand language and creating a varied brand with at least six core brand elements that help in the long-term differentiation and content creation of the brand.

Our definition of brand is that brand is how other people experience what you want to believe.

Emily, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Nearly 10 years ago, I had a revelation. After spending the first part of my career as a journalist, publisher and then a VP of corporate communication, I realized that business leaders were pouring their hearts, minds, money and time into building companies. As impressive and able as many of them were — they tended to be adrift when it came to putting all of that passion and mission into language that would differentiate them.

At the time, more sophisticated branding was really only done by huge companies with million-dollar budgets. (And even then, it was too focused on extrinsic factors.)

I felt that was an injustice. And I saw that as our consumers began to have more and more options and insight into companies, the way to differentiate was going to come more and more from experience and values. Not too long after, we started Root + River and we named our way of approaching and practicing branding as intrinsic branding. Intrinsic branding is branding from the inside out. It’s organizing the brand around the beliefs, mission, category and soul of the brand.

That’s what I do today as the owner and lead brand strategist at Root + River, an intrinsic branding team focused on language and strategy working with high-end service-based small businesses, elite coaches and consultants, legacy brands that need an infusion of spirit. We call them the Defiers, because they want to change their industry, their community or the world through their brand.

Away from work, I’m a writer and artist, a partner to my husband of 20–plus years and a mom to two amazing daughters. I devour books, enjoy traveling and baking and spend my sunny Arizona weekends hiking, working out, painting or creating something or other – all things that lift the spirit. 

I believe the brand is spirit. It is the essence of individual and collective intent. It is how you express that essence to the world.

The clients we get to work with are very concerned about their brand message and feel it doesn’t reflect them or stand out.

They want to know how to tell their story better.

They want to be more powerful and consistent in their brand so it attracts aligned opportunities.

Using our intrinsic branding approach, we guide clients through a Root Session brand strategy engagement, an immersive experience to uncover a compelling, clear brand that answers all their questions. We provide mission, core values (we call them beliefs and standards), positioning, ideal audience, and brand narrative. Then we work with them to create their brand story, define their audience, clarify their message, write new website copy and create a content strategy that shows them how to stand out.

Our clients are people who lead businesses with intention, ambition and heart. And our work gives them the language they have been seeking to define that.

We get close to our clients.
We go deeper to truly differentiate.
We collaborate and coach to uncover the brand and walk them through each step of the branding process.
We think long-term and set your brand up for enduring differentiation, using our decades of brand, content and marketing expertise.

Our best-in-the-world is brand foundation (mission, message, values/beliefs), brand language and messaging and category creation.

We are really proud that when we’re done collaborating with our clients, they enjoy greater differentiation in their market, have powerful, clear brand message they love for a tailored audience.

They are also able to charge more, and sell and interact more to their ideal audience.

Brands are born in conversations and when we complete a project, clients have excellent language to use for years to come to describe their brand and their vision. They have knowledge of what to say, post, put on websites in every conversation.

And I’m personally so fulfilled knowing we helped equip people equipped with powerful language to have meaningful conversations.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Our mission as an organization is to inspire leaders to go inward. We live in such a shallow society, and one that is obsessed with productivity above all. Those siren songs can pull leaders out and away from their own self-awareness, beliefs and convictions.

My personal mission is to inspire undivided living. Inspired by author, thinker and expert facilitator Parker Palmer (among others), I see many of our troubles come from the way we divide and separate ourselves from our true nature. We tend to chop ourselves up into disparate identities and pretend one does not connect to the other. This sense of separation and othering is where conflict, harm and violence (personal, professional, social) come from.

The work I do is to really about allowing space for people to bring those various parts of themselves back together, wrapping and rooting all of into the deeper meaning in life and work.

This is an act of creation that is woven with acceptance, inquiry and treating a person’s or an organization’s purpose as sacred and precious. It’s about stopping and honoring the power of language, and safeguarding the liberty of expression.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

In 2022, I bought out my business partner and co-founder and became the full owner of Root + River. In the process of this transition, the other members of the team also moved on. Suddenly, I was more-or-less alone in the business. It was a huge pivot for me!

I am a middle child from a big family and also a highly collaborative person. I greatly value working in groups, co-creating and collaborating – I am so inspired by other people.

While I’d chosen to take on the business on my own, confronting the fact that I’d have to rebuild it all on my own was scary, full of unknowns and challenging on every level. There were many nights when I wondered if I could rebuild.

Early on in the transition, I made a key decision. I decided to hold all the unknowns and what ifs more lightly. I decided I would try to approach this transition not with the heaviness and urgency of “Emily, you MUST figure this out!” Rather, I would try to focus on “Either this will work or it won’t. I’ll do my best and see what happens.”

I was very intentional about trying to exchange all of my rising anxiety with curiosity. When I caught myself backsliding (which was often), I tried to step back into the idea that what I was attempting was not life or death. I tried to laugh, to breathe and not take it all so seriously.

This served me really well. My word of the year that year was “claim” — I wanted to focus my energy not on all the work I still had to do, but on all the work I had already done to get here, and trust that would take me where I needed to go.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rootandriver.com/
• Instagram: @emilyatlarge
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilysoccorsy/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RootRiverBrandStrategy

Image Credits
Leandra Blei, Jean Laninga, Whitney Thatcher/Studio W Portraits