I’m looking for the right problem, not the right title.
I’m interested in joining an organization at an inflection point — growth, transformation, repositioning, acquisition, or increasing complexity — where brand has become an organizational issue rather than simply a marketing one.
That’s the kind of work I want to take on next.
You may be here if
The organization has outgrown the story it tells about itself.
Growth, acquisition, or transition has created fragmentation.
Leadership, marketing, product, sales, and culture are operating from different definitions of the brand.
Important decisions are being made without a shared strategic filter.
Sometimes the brand expression isn’t what needs to change. The system underneath it is.
What I bring
Enterprise Brand Strategy
I clarify what an organization stands for, where it is going, and how that position creates meaningful differentiation.
Built and led two brand strategy firms across 25 years, advising organizations through growth, repositioning, transition, and change.
Organizational Alignment
I turn brand strategy into a shared decision-making framework across leadership, teams, functions, and partners.
Led a long-term engagement to create the first organization-wide brand platform and messaging system for a 500+ employee public education organization serving 18 school districts.
Brand Systems
I build the infrastructure that connects positioning, behavior, identity, experience, and execution.
Codified 25 years of applied brand strategy in The Brand Operating System—a framework for turning brand into organizational infrastructure.
Design + Transformation
I use strategy and design together to help organizations navigate growth, repositioning, complexity, and change.
Led The Syracuse Orchestra’s brand transformation; season tickets increased 15%, new subscribers 23%, web sessions 29%, and social reach 42% year over year.
The book on how brand works
More than 25 years at the intersection of brand strategy and design: building and leading two branding firms, advising organizations through periods of change, and teaching designers and strategists as a Professor of Practice at Syracuse University.
The Brand Operating System codifies what that work taught. A book can describe the system. Building it takes takes the right organization, with the mandate, team, and authority to do it at scale.
The Brand Operating System
Marc V. Stress
The role may not exist yet
The need may eventually take the form of Chief Brand Officer, VP Brand & Design, VP Design & Innovation, enterprise brand strategy leadership, or an adjacent mandate shaped around the organization.
I’m most interested in the conditions that make consequential work possible:
- Meaningful organizational scope.
- Executive-level access.
- Cross-functional authority and collaboration.
- A consequential problem worth solving.
- The resources and mandate to actually solve it.
- Thoughtful, capable people who challenge one another and make the work better.
KNOW AN ORGANIZATION AT THIS KIND OF INFLECTION POINT?
I’d like to meet them.
If you’re leading one, advising one, investing in one, recruiting for one, or simply know someone I should be talking with, I’d welcome the connection.