Brands don't grow
by blending in.
I'm Fred Saunders — 25 years building category-defining brands for Charles Schwab, LendingTree, Autodesk, and OneTrust. BrandMotion is where I take on a small number of outside advisory projects for founders and marketing leaders who want senior brand thinking without a full-time hire.
Brand work built at —
Selected case files
Work worth bragging about.
"Talk to Chuck"
Turned Charles Schwab's own nickname into a $30M national campaign platform — now taught at Harvard Business School (Case 507-005) and inducted into the FCS Hall of Fame.
Lenny goes national
Rebuilt brand meaning right after the housing crash, then brought in Jim Henson's Creature Shop to build Lenny — a spokes-puppet that gave LendingTree a voice no competitor could copy.
One brand, one voice
Unified Brand, Creative, Comms, and Sustainability into one ~180-person global team across 16 countries, then scaled Autodesk University into a world-class hybrid event.
Repositioning for the AI era
Led an enterprise-wide repositioning around AI-Ready Governance and built OneTrust's first integrated Corporate Marketing organization from ten disparate disciplines.
How I can help
Three ways to bring me in.
Brand & GTM Strategy
A positioning and go-to-market plan that makes your differentiation obvious — and saves you from expensive trial and error.
- Positioning & narrative
- Audience & channel strategy
- Brand architecture
Narrative & Creative Direction
The story and voice that make you memorable — built to hold up across every channel, not just the pitch deck.
- Brand voice & messaging
- Campaign concepting
- Script & content direction
Advisory & Fractional Support
An experienced brand and marketing exec in your corner for launches, rebrands, or campaigns — without a full-time hire.
- Executive brand advisory
- Launch & rebrand support
- Marketing team sounding board
The belief behind the work
Brand love drives business results.
A customer has to believe in you before they'll buy from you. Marketing grounded in a true brand idea will always outperform marketing that isn't — in engagement, conversion, and ROI. Build a brand your people are proud of and your customers see themselves in, and the business takes care of itself.