Interim or Fractional Head of Brand
A senior brand leader in your leadership team,
2–3 days a week or full-time for a set period.
Brand Strategy · Governance · AI-Era systems · Creative Network
Brand strategy, governance and content systems for global organizations.
Twelve years leading brand at Art Basel and Givaudan, now working with companies and agencies as an interim lead or senior partner. I also audit how AI systems describe your brand.
What I do
Strategy & architecture
Positioning, brand and product naming, portfolio structure.
Governance & automation
Brand rules, trademark management, DAM system, content automation, AI content tools.
Expression
Brand identity, campaign direction, art direction, photography, video, design.
Experience
Events, trade shows, VIP and immersive formats, webinars, measurement.
Creative network
Photographers, videographers, designers, writers, worldwide and per project.
Twelve years, at scale
11
acquisitions unified into one brand architecture
250+
stakeholders aligned through change management
100+
trademarks renewed and protected, yearly
50+
customer & client interviews on brand perception
~40%
faster asset turnaround at global scale
~50%
faster naming timelines via AI-piloted platform
5
regions · 100+ markets of brand activation
Worked with
The most common challenges
Brands don't lose coherence overnight. They lose it one decision at a time.
Every new market, acquisition, campaign, tool and team adds interpretation. Slowly, the brand starts sounding different depending on who, or what, is speaking. AI hasn't created this problem. It has industrialized it.
Fragmentation through growth
New markets, acquisitions and teams pull the brand apart.
Content at scale, without a system
More volume and formats, with no rules that hold.
The machine layer
AI systems describe your brand before a human reads a word.
Brand can't prove its value
Marketing and sales report against clear KPIs; brand teams are asked to justify spend without numbers leadership trusts.
Perception, signal, governance, roadmap: one way of working, applied consistently, whether the audience is a customer or an AI model, evaluating you through GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization).
Services
Four ways to work together.
Every engagement runs on the same approach. What differs is scope and commitment.
For larger scopes, I bring in a vetted network of specialists, designers, writers, developers, activated as the project requires.
For companies
Explore more
Brand Coherence Diagnostic™
3–4 weeks, fixed scope.
A board-ready roadmap on how people and AI systems understand your brand, with a KPI framework linking brand work to business results.
Brand Systems & Governance
3–9 months.
Architecture, content strategy and automation, brand KPI framework and leadership reporting.
For agencies and studios
Senior brand strategy and creative direction on demand
Lead strategist on a pitch or client project, brief and concept review, direction of expression and experience work.
By the day, project or retainer, under your brand or mine.
Most engagements start with the Diagnostic. Depending on what it surfaces, we scope either a Brand Systems & Governance project or ongoing Interim or Fractional Head of Brand support, on the same operating principles. Senior brand strategy and creative direction on demand is a separate entry point, for agencies and studios that need senior brand thinking without going through the Diagnostic.
All engagements are scoped on a short free call. Confidentiality applies; an NDA can be signed on request.
The Brand Coherence Diagnostic™
A structured diagnosis of your situation, human and machine. Fixed scope, three to four weeks, clear deliverables.
3–4weeks
fixed scope
4deliverables
1prioritized roadmap
- 01
Week 1
Perception audit
How your brand is actually understood today: by customers, by markets, and by AI systems (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude).
- 02
Week 1–2
Source & signal audit
What's feeding those perceptions: your website, guidelines, content systems, press, and structured data.
- 03
Week 2–3
Governance gap analysis
Where your brand architecture, guidelines, workflows, and adoption break down, and why.
- 04
Week 3–4
Prioritized roadmap
What to fix first, what it takes, and what it's worth. Delivered in a working session, not a 50-page report.
Most clients begin here. It's the fastest way to know what's actually going on, and it works standalone, whether or not we continue together.
« Most organizations don’t struggle with their brand. They struggle with alignment. Leadership says one thing, marketing says another, and AI fills the gaps with whatever it finds first. My job is reconnecting strategy, narrative, and execution, including the version machines pick up. »
Selected work
Complexity, turned into brand systems.
Different industries. The same underlying challenge, growth creates complexity, AI accelerates it.
CASE 01
Givaudan · Taste & Wellbeing
Unifying 11 acquisitions under one brand architecture.
Eleven acquisitions across five regions had left the division with a fragmented portfolio.
Role: As Global Brand Director, project lead across three business units and five regions.
11
Acquisitions unified
CHF 3M+
Investment managed
~50%
Faster naming timelines
AI lens
Governance became the foundation for an AI-powered naming platform, every output constrained by the portfolio architecture.
Brand architecture reduces complexity before it creates efficiency.
CASE 02
Givaudan + Art Basel
Content automation that stays on-brand at scale
Content demand had outgrown manual review. Every handoff was a new point where the brand could drift.
Role: Owning the operating model; content systems built with in-house studio and cross-functional partners.
~40%
Faster content delivery
100+
Self-service contributors
2
Live AI content systems
AI lens
Rules embedded in the pipeline, not layered on after, the principle now required to keep AI content on-brand.
AI only works when governance already exists.
CASE 03
Art Basel
Brand expression across a global art fair
One fair brand across three cities, and a brand that stays alive between fairs.
Role: Directing the creative team and external partners (Pentagram, Barnbrook, photographers, videographers).
What I did
Directed the creative output across fairs with Pentagram, Barnbrook and a pool of photographers and videographers, and ran an editorial calendar of about 12 portrait videos a year.
50+
Media and partners served
~12
Editorial portrait videos per year
3
Cities
A fair lasts a few days. The brand runs all year.
Creative network
A network of creatives, activated per project.
Photographers, filmmakers, designers and writers across the globe brought in to fit the client and the brief.
Illustrative artifact
What an AI perception correction looks like.
A representative example of what a diagnostic surfaces. Illustrative, anonymized, not an actual client output.
BeforeChatGPT · unaudited
Prompt: "What does [Company] do?"
"[Company] is a Swiss ingredients supplier. It has offices in Europe and produces flavors for the food industry."
- · Missing: taste, health, fragrance divisions
- · Missing: 100+ years of history
- · Missing: sustainability positioning
- · Outdated: "supplier" framing, not "creator"
AfterChatGPT · post-audit
Same prompt, corrected signals
"[Company] is a global creator of taste, fragrance and health experiences, headquartered in Switzerland with over a century of history. It works with food, beverage, fine-fragrance and consumer-health brands, with a stated commitment to sustainable sourcing."
- · Recovered: full portfolio breadth
- · Recovered: heritage and scale
- · Recovered: brand positioning language
- · Recovered: differentiators
Achieved through structured data, content architecture, and coherent brand signals, not paid placement.
Testimonials
What collaborators say.
“She operates at the intersection of strategy, governance and creativity.”
Margarita Orsini
Head of Brand Governance, Roche
“She lines up business, customer and brand into one coherent direction.”
Thomas Ullram
Global Marketing Director, Givaudan
“A natural strategist who defines the core challenge and shapes an elegant way forward.”
Nicky Young
Change Management Consultant
About Marion
Twelve years transforming how organizations are perceived. Now leading the next evolution: brand perception in the age of AI.
Twelve years helping organizations transform how they are perceived, through brand strategy, storytelling, and creative leadership.
Art Basel (5 years): led the evolution of one of the world’s most recognized cultural brands, bringing together brand strategy, creative direction, storytelling, and global brand experiences across Basel, Miami Beach, Hong Kong, and Buenos Aires, in partnership with Pentagram and Barnbrook.
Givaudan (7 years): transformed a global B2B brand by aligning positioning, communications, creative operations, and AI-enabled brand systems across five regions and eleven acquisitions, CHF 3M+ in investment managed, an in-house creative studio built from zero.
Earlier work (EPFL, Paléo, 3 years): created communications and creative platforms for major cultural initiatives, translating complex ideas into engaging public experiences, from an international exhibition in Tokyo to Switzerland’s largest music festival.
Across every role, one lesson became clear: perception, not positioning, is what ultimately shapes trust, reputation, and choice. Today, AI is fundamentally changing how perception is formed, making GEO and AEO the next frontier of brand leadership.
Jury, Le Book Connections Zurich (2025, 2026) · Member, Women in Digital Switzerland · Member, Forum 100 since 2015, Le Temps.
Zurich-based, working globally in English and French.
Brand GovernanceAI ReadinessBrand ArchitectureBrand ExpressionChange ManagementProsci® CertifiedEnglish / French
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