See what our clients say about our services under the Testimonials nav tab.

Tell me more about the BRAND FOUNDATION and the AI-readable to Market-preferred path?

The Brand Foundation chart you’ve seen on the homepage is a bit cryptic, but that’s because our process is proprietary - and no AI or marketing consultant would provide anything of similar depth. Do reach out and we’ll be glad to explain it, and we can also show examples and perhaps relate it to your company’s current foundations.

Our Brand Foundation model engenders beneficially positive outcomes that can support, add value to, and even transform your business:

  • first and foremost, the Brand Foundation ensures that the Brand has deeply meaningful content: doing so will earn market appreciation, selection, and loyalty; and you’ve seen the massive level of awareness of such importance in the marketplace, by business gurus, and by a seminal McKinsey document in December 2025 about Branding being #1 in the priority of marketers;

  • not only the Business facts but also the roots of ‘Brand’ need to be readable by AI. This way, a unique set of contributions that only you can make can be crafted, and be the basis for competitive differentiation;

  • Meaning is about the space you occupy in the customer’s and the market’s mind, as the governing context within which the organization operates;

  • Structure is how the organization go to market: Portfolio Management first and then an aligned, enabling Brand Architecture;

  • Articulation is how you show up in every aspect of the business and in every channel of communications.

    These three aligned pathways to the marketplace will ensure that the ‘shiny objects’ every marketer craves will be logical, abundant, automatically and effortlessly aligned - and as such will need lower marketing investments. This has been a problem that has plagued companies and their marketers for the past several years: the shallower the Brand Fundamentals, the more ‘storytelling’ and related costs are needed to to make marketing and related communications ‘stick’.

Again, we’d love it if you would reach out to learn more.

Tell me more about your WORKSHOPS and SPRINTS?

As Business requires more modern and flexible approaches, we created two targeted and personalized assessments & resolutions methods for precisely identifying challenges or opportunities – and do so quickly and relatively inexpensively. See how enthusiastic have our clients been about these methods under the Testimonials nav tab.

Workshops are joint effort with the client / client’s team: duration is flexible, but is typically within one week.

Sprints are eleven-day topic-based concentrated efforts:

FAQs

  • a Friday conversation (a long one, half a day usually) with you

  • a weekend of our own work

  • the following five weekdays, composed of a 2- or 3-day Workshop with your team and the other days of our own work

  • the weekend after, of our own work

  • then the following Monday we present our conclusions

Tell me more about your Individual Sessions and the Workgroups?

These formats are designed to share the Brand Fundamentals in such a way as to provide immediate value to anyone involved in/with Branding, so that they can be flexibly adopted and adopted them to the client’s characteristics and needs. Again, we focus on ways of thinking about and using the Brand Fundamentals — NOT about standardized formulas and templates.

Individual Sessions: for each of the Brand Fundamentals and future additions, Q. Malandrino narrates the Powerpoint-like pages on-screen. Please inquire about the fee, as it varies according to the level of personal support you may ask for or the required format if you are, for example, a corporate group.

The Workgroups: for each of the Brand Fundamentals and future additions, Q. Malandrino presents the given content in a 3-hour live zoom session, for max 8 participants, with Q&As throughout — plus a 30-minute private session in the days after the session. The fee is $180 per person.

Here are the scope and depth of the Brand Fundamentals, and review the sessions details below in the Course. Note that in both the Individuals and the Workgroups we may combine some content to deliver a more cohesive view of certain inter-related topics:

  • Brand and Branding: an overview — 75 pages, 61 minutes: terms definition, and establishing an accurate context

  • Phase 1: Planning — 79 pages, 96 minutes: know what needs to be known to do a Branding Program

  • Brand Platform — 84 pages, 97 minutes: learn about the core of a Brand

  • Brand Architecture — 131 pages, 122 minutes: a uniquely insightful of how a Brand should go to market

  • Market Persona overview — 28 pages, 49 minutes: an overview of Culture, Messaging, and Identity

  • Behavior & Culture — 65 pages, 60 minutes: connect Brand with Behavior and then a holistic Culture

  • Messaging — 50 pages, 41 minutes: map what to say to whom, in service of the the Business and of the Brand

  • Visual Identity — 61 pages, 56 minutes: not a design course here, but an appreciation of the visual persona

  • Command & Control — 34 pages, 35 minutes: it’s not the created Brand that counts, it’s the implemented Brand

  • Winning - 33 pages, 50 minutes: for consultants and corporate manager, how to manage for Brand wins

    In addition, we are in the process of adding three new sessions:

  • Brand, AI, and the Agentic Era (coming in March 2026)

  • Business and Brand (coming in April 2026): the business underpinnings for Brand

  • Naming (coming in April 2026): an art and a science, a primer

Tell me about your Masterbranded ONLINE COURSE?

A professional-grade Brand Strategy and Brand Fundamentals Course, it is made of 10 Sessions each with six modules, for a total of 640 pages of context, perspectives, practical examples, and case histories - and as noted below, expansions will be ready in March. The Course is CPD-certified - the same organization that certifies Mark Ritson’s miniMBA courses, and you can use it to enrich your resume’/CV.

The median fee for the Course is $1,750. But we have programs and incentives based on your needs, your interest in personal support, group attendance, and more. Contact us in the Get Started nav button to start a conversation.

  • context, historical to current

  • who does Branding today

  • definitions and functions

  • Corporate vs Product Branding

  • strategy to market: a path

  • briefly, the value of Brand

What you’ll get
An examination of Brand and Branding, as the context for the course and to provide a way to talk effectively to clients about the subject matters and their inter-relevance.

  • what it should, can, or must be

  • the parts, and Purpose

  • investigations & assessment

  • define what Brand needs to do

  • Action Plan, timing, budgets

  • how can AI help?

What you’ll get
Clarity on what must be known in order to create all the Brand Fundamentals, and on the nature and function of the Action Plan as the root for all brand development work.

  • Purpose (vs Brand)

  • path, models, componentry

  • Brand Platform examples

  • creating a Brand Promise

  • Promises and Taglines

  • how can AI help?

What you’ll get
Actionable clarity on the nature, role, and creation process of a Brand’s core and how it informs all other brand components and then everything that Brand will be and do in the world.

  • role, function, governing views

  • vs Portfolio Management

  • not just Branded House vs ...

  • Tiers, Process, Decision Trees

  • examples and case histories

  • how can AI help?

What you’ll get
In-depth understanding of the indispensability of it toward making Brand real in the marketplace, and of the completely bespoke nature of each and every client solution.

  • the Brand Platform as root

  • three-part translation

  • the Briefs

  • working with clients’ teams

  • implementation planning

  • how can AI help?

What you’ll get
A clear framing on how the tenets of Brand become real in the marketplace via the three aspects that create a market perception, and how to accurately doing so.

  • Brand and Culture

  • Corporate vs Brand Culture

  • Brand Values

  • work process, and adoption

  • case histories

  • how can AI help?

What you’ll get
An actionable appreciation of the relationship between employee culture and Brand, and of planning a sequential path from current state to alignment to adoption.

  • structure and approach

  • corporate vs business units

  • internal & external partners

  • case histories & examples

  • testing and deployment

  • how can AI help?

What you’ll get
A clear relationship between Brand and its messages, and how to deploy a delivery plan that optimizes the clients’ internal resources and external communications partners.

  • process, sequence, time, fees

  • the Creative Brief

  • an examination of the parts

  • the Theme

  • refresh, evolve, create

  • how can AI help?

what you’ll get
A practical understanding of Design in Corporate Identity, its scope and depth, and to plan and create it based on Brand and type of client as well as timing and budgets.

  • what is Brand Governance

  • the parts

  • governing bodies

  • Brand Ambassadors

  • corporate examples

  • how can AI help?

what you’ll get
A pragmatic and efficient approach to command & control the Brand’s tenets and all of its expressions: it’s not the created Brand that counts - it’s the implemented Brand.

  • governing perspectives

  • pitches and presentations

  • proposals and related process

  • responding to RFPs

  • examples

  • how can AI help?

what you’ll get
Nothing matters if you don’t win the work. But competence alone often is not enough, and there’s only one way that a practitioner can do ‘sales’: stop selling, and start helping.

By March/April 2026 we will introduce:

  • a new session on Business and Brand;

  • a new session on Naming; and

  • a new session on Brand & AI in the Agentic Era

Is your ONLINE COURSE certified as Continuing Education?

It is. The Course is certified as Continuing Education by The CPD Certification Services, a highly respected British organization - the same that certifies Mark Ritson’s miniMBA Courses. And you can put this Certification on your resume’ or CV. See details at https://www.cpduk.co.uk/

How is your ONLINE COURSE different from others?

We see six main points of difference:

  • They tend to be generalized – they’re called ‘Brand Strategy’ and give a holistic overview of everything; but breadth denies topical depth. We offer hands-on specificity, not a brushcoat bit of everything.

  • They are based on a perspective – they are colored by the teachers’ own expertise: MBA-types see Branding through a leftbrain business lens and Creatives through a rightbrain expressional lens.
    We are brand-foundational, and background- and application-agnostic.

  • They are about ‘simplicity’ – they may say “you are a busy professional and don’t have time and so this course …”, and the perspective tends to be “make branding simple” with ”here are four things to boost …” and “six worksheets that will …”. We don’t see it that way: Brand and Branding are not simple matters, cannot be made simple, and augmenting knowledge should never be shortchanged. We are Professional Grade: we review Branding in all its glorious complexity, in an organized way – then, it’s up to you to ‘simplify’ it for clients and their challenges.

  • They are about framing – they tend to focus on ‘what needs to be done’ and offer little in terms of how to actually do it: sure, the basis of Brand may very well be a Why-Who-What-How-etc framework, but once you have filled those blanks …. how exactly do you extract a Positioning from it? or a considered Brand Architecture? Framing is an important start, and it better be as good as it can be, but then you actually have to do the work and come up with the solution.

  • They offer formulas and inside-out standardized models – they may have charts like … Market Realities plus Corporate Strengths divided by Trends minus Competition times Corporate Goals = BRAND. Or … Why, What, How circles intersecting in the middle, and that middle is labeled ‘BRAND’ - but then how do you actually craft that "BRAND"?. And as importantly, they seem to ignore that every client is different and so a given model cannot be universally and consistently applied. We’ll share how to think about and then do it, with an outside-in perspective that makes how you work bespoke to what a client needs.

  • They offer some real-life examples, and lots of examples that exists out there in the public domain. We do have examples and case histories, and more of it; BUT as most of what we show is our own global work, we can share the details and inner workings - it’ll feel like you have done that work yourself. And you can use those graphics and formats to enrich your own work.

And the most important question…

The Course is focused on A and B and C — the Fundamentals of Brand. But... don’t I need to know everything else too?

No – not really. In Branding, the skill sets and perspectives needed by what’s before A and what’s after C are not the same needed by A and B and C. Countless courses exist for that before and that after if that’s what you need.