Who we are

Brand Savants is a member of The Brand Establishment, an elite national network of brand development and branding firms who embrace the latest advances in the field and who share tools and strategies that build our clients' businesses.

"Buzzwords are dangerous. They make us lazy," according to Jim Hughes, founder of the The Brand Establishment and one of Brand Savants' chief strategy officers. "They become overused and we lose the precision of their true meaning."

The Brand Establishment was founded to cut through the fog that obscures the clarity of core business truths when they are distilled into buzzwords -- like 'brand.' We help clients focus on the core truth of what brand is all about -- differentiation -- identifying the distinction that will influence choice.

As a member of The Brand Establishment, Russ Cornelius has completed master's-level coursework and certification to become a Certified Brand Strategist, one of only 14 nationwide. The education and training of The Brand Strategies Institute continues with quarterly meetings, virtual conferences, peer counseling, virtual brainstorming and networking.

The definition of a brand is a 'claim of distinction.' Here is our claim:

1. We help you build your business beyond your expectations

2. We are Brand Enculturators

3. We have Certified Brand Strategists

4. We offer multi-disciplinary intelligence power through Resource Rich™

Brand Positioning: "Your Chief Strategy Officer™"

Brand Promise: Increased company worth

We are an uncommonly strategic consulting firm.

We work with companies to define, develop and enculturate their brands. We have a sister company, Marketing Savants, that can execute integrated business-building marketing tactics. We are Resource Rich™, because we partner with folks who are the best and brightest in their areas of expertise -- people who bring in the big guns for sharp shooting when and where you need it. That's value: getting top echelon talent for mid-range budgets.

Who We Are

A Chief Strategy Officer is the one who's always asking things like, "How does this align with our strategy? How are we delivering on strategy in these areas? Where is our strategy succeeding beyond expectation and what can we learn from it? Why is our strategy falling short here?"

We are brand zealots.

So what is your 'brand,' anyway? It's the evidence of your distinction. Not just a claim of distinction, but the demonstration of it. Without true distinction, your product or service, yes, even your company, is generic. Or worse, a commodity.

We are passionate in our quest to make your brand successful, which means it's relevant, credible and dependable.

We are brand developers who will help build your business beyond your expectations, guaranteed.

We work with companies to identify, solidify and operationalize their brands. And that will increase your company's worth.

We are our clients' 'Chief Strategy Officer™'.

Because we believe brand strategy -- which is really the corporate strategy -- should reside at C-level. Strategy is what we obsess about and 'officer,' well, because we guarantee our effectiveness, so we welcome executive-level accountability.

We are largely virtual.

And because we designed our business model that way, we don't have to worry about supporting huge talent for 2,080 hours a year. And neither do you.

Brand Savants represents an innovation, a new model called "Small Smart." Simply put, it's a core group of agency smarties (we call each other 'savants') with good strategic minds, deep-and-wide branding know-how and lots of client category experience. We provide razor-sharp brand development and branding.

We are Brand Enculturators™.

We work with clients to actualize their differentiation through Brand Enculturation™, which is the way you operationalize your brand and align it internally. We identify all the ways in which you can better "walk the talk" and get everyone marching to the brand beat: human resources, training, production, systems and processes, organizational development, customer service, sales.

We do this with our Resource Rich™ multi-disciplinary intelligence power -- a formidable network of industry experts within every business discipline.

It's beyond marketing, it's lining up vision and action and ensuring that all brand touchpoints are saluting the Brand Constitution we have developed in the first stages of our work together.

Now your brand vision is coming to life. Now your brand stature is on the rise. And now your company's worth is increasing.

All because you offer something distinctive in your market. And that distinction is worth a premium.

Are you ready for success? Become a valued brand and claim it. We can show you how.