Marketing Executive · Mill Valley, CA

Great brands aren't launched. They're built to last.

Twenty-five years turning companies into brands people remember, study, and talk about for decades — from a Harvard Business School case study at Charles Schwab to an AI-governance repositioning at OneTrust. Currently VP of Corporate Marketing at OneTrust, building toward CMO.

Portrait of Fred Saunders
25+ yearsleading marketing organizations that drive enterprise growth
Fred Saunders speaking on stage at a OneTrust event
Global roadshow to roll out the new OneTrust positioning and identity
Fred Saunders with a group of tech leaders from Africa at the TechWomen conference
Meeting with tech leaders from Africa at TechWomen18 Summit with Autodesk

I've spent my career doing one thing: helping complicated companies say something simple and true about who they are — then proving it moves the business.

That's meant building OneTrust's first integrated corporate marketing organization and leading its shift from "privacy company" to the definitive voice in AI governance. It's meant unifying Autodesk's brand, communications, and social impact functions into a single 180-person global team. And earlier in my career, as an agency lead, it meant convincing Charles Schwab to build an entire brand platform around his own nickname — a campaign that ended up as a Harvard Business School case study.

I'm at my best in rooms where the stakes are real: board-level scrutiny, brands that have outgrown their own story, companies betting their next chapter on getting this right. I build teams that can operate at that altitude, and I stay close enough to the craft to still write the line myself when it matters.

Outside of work, I'm based in Mill Valley, CA — still a details person, still a writer at heart.

Selected work

Repositioning brands that had outgrown their story

Three moments, three different companies, the same underlying job: find the truth the brand had stopped saying out loud, and rebuild the strategy, org, and creative around it.

From "privacy company" to the definitive voice in AI governance

OneTrust had built a market-leading privacy and data governance platform, but the outside world hadn't caught up to where the product — or the market — was heading. I led an enterprise-wide repositioning around AI-Ready Governance: new mission, vision, and value proposition, plus the company's first full visual and verbal identity transformation.

Alongside the repositioning, I built OneTrust's first integrated Corporate Marketing organization — consolidating ten previously disparate disciplines into one 25-person global team — and stood up the company's first brand health measurement and executive thought leadership programs.

Research into the awareness gap limiting funnel performance drove changes that improved awareness-to-consideration conversion by as much as 47%.
47%
lift in awareness-to-consideration
10 → 1
disciplines unified into one org
14,000+
customers served by the platform

One parent brand, replacing hundreds of product-first identities

Autodesk had grown for decades product by product, and its brand reflected that — fragmented, engineering-led, hard to recognize as one company. I led the enterprise brand transformation that unified Brand, Creative, Communications, Content, Events, Sustainability, and the Autodesk Foundation into a single ~180-person organization across 16 countries, and worked directly with executive leadership and the Board on platform strategy and corporate storytelling through several major company initiatives.

The most visible proof point: I directed Autodesk University's transformation into a world-class hybrid experience, scaling participation from 14,000 to over 100,000 attendees.

14K → 100K+
Autodesk University attendance
+12%
global brand awareness
$13M+
influenced qualified pipeline

Rebuilding a brand's meaning right after the housing crash

I joined LendingTree as the company was pivoting from originating mortgages to becoming a lead-generation marketplace — right in the wake of the housing crash, when trust in anything mortgage-related had collapsed. I rebuilt value, meaning, and differentiation back into the brand, which in turn built preference, margin, and efficacy into our digital and search efforts, separating LendingTree from a field of interchangeable, "me-too" interest-rate advertisers.

Part of that story was creative, not just strategic: we brought in Jim Henson's Creature Shop to design and build Lenny, a custom spokes-puppet who became the face of a national campaign — giving LendingTree a voice competitors couldn't copy.

The brand and marketing strategy put in place during this period helped drive roughly an 18x increase in company value over the following years.
~18x
rise in company value during tenure
25%
boost in customer retention
+12%
engagement across all verticals

"Talk to Chuck" — turning a nickname into a $30M national campaign

Schwab was losing ground to discount brokers and full-service firms alike, caught in the middle with no clear reason to choose it. Leading strategy on the account, I helped build the campaign around something almost nobody outside the company knew: that Charles Schwab's friends, family, and employees all just called him "Chuck." That insight became the entire platform — a promise that talking to Schwab meant talking to someone who'd actually listen.

The campaign launched as a national, multimedia push and went on to win an Effie Award. It's still taught today: Harvard Business School published a case study on it (Case 507-005), and in 2022 it was inducted into the FCS Portfolio Awards Hall of Fame alongside Mastercard's "Priceless."

Now taught at Harvard Business School as a case study in advertising strategy — nearly two decades after it launched.
36%
increase in New-to-Firm & Net New Assets
$130M
account under management
Effie
Award winner
Track record

Experience

Twenty-five years across B2B SaaS, financial services, and agency leadership.

VP, Corporate Marketing · OneTrust
2025 — Present
Leading brand, communications, content, and corporate narrative for the AI-Ready Governance platform ($550M ARR, ~$4.5B valuation).
Founder & Principal · Brand Motion
2023 — 2025
Independent advisory practice; go-to-market strategy and brand positioning for VC-backed FinTech portfolio companies, including engagements for Fiat Growth.
VP, Global Brand Marketing, Communications & Social Impact · Autodesk
2018 — 2023
Led ~180-person global organization across 16 countries and ~$100M annual marketing investment; Marketing Leadership Team member.
SVP, Head of Corporate Marketing and Brand · Bankrate / CreditCards.com
2016 — 2018
Unified six card-related businesses into one brand architecture; supported a 10% increase in customer acquisition.
SVP, Head of Brand, Advertising and Marcom · BNP Paribas / Bank of the West
2015 — 2016
Built customer-insight-driven marketing roadmap for a regulated global banking institution.
SVP, Corporate Marketing and Brand · LendingTree
2012 — 2015
Grew customer retention 25% through CRM-aligned brand messaging; built agency and CRM capabilities company-wide.
Partner/EVP, Director of Client Services · The Buntin Group
2009 — 2012
Drove a 30% increase in agency revenue within 24 months; led global sponsorship activation for Royal Bank of Canada.
Group Account Director · Havas New York / San Francisco
2004 — 2009
Led strategy for the $130M Charles Schwab account, including the "Talk to Chuck" campaign; achieved a 36% increase in New-to-Firm and Net New Assets in one year.
Recognition

Honors & Awards

Effie Award Grand Ogilvy Award Gold Ogilvy Award B2B Campaign of the Year — Adweek Adweek "Buzz" Digital Award Gold & Silver Financial Communications Society Awards Harvard Business School Case Study

Let's talk about what's next.

Open to Chief Marketing Officer roles and conversations with boards, CEOs, and search partners.