We're here to make you look good.

Self Mayd is an online self-managed brand strategy project with on-demand support for Brand Managers who want to enhance their brand's influence from the boardroom to the balance sheet.

Ever feel like you're pushing sh*t up a hill in your role as Brand Manager?

Your work often gets derailed (and devalued) by short term tactics and sales activation.
You don’t have a brand strategy in place, or if you do, it’s collecting cobwebs or is mistaken for your ‘brand guidelines’.
You’re not taken seriously – sometimes even referred to as the colouring in department.
Your role tends to be one part brand and forty parts whatever doesn’t fit into the performance marketing team.
You lack confidence in selling the benefits of brand building because well, sometimes things that count, can’t easily be counted.

Cue our introduction.

Welcome to Self Mayd – our debut taking our brand strategy prowess and know-how online, to give Brand Managers around the world, the clarity, confidence and community to better succeed in their role and brand building efforts.

Self Mayd is for Brand Managers who want to:

Gain more confidence in their role and up their credibility and influence.
Learn how to develop a first-class brand strategy with the support of an accomplished Brand Strategist.
Talk the language of the naysayers and know-it-alls in their organisation to earn the respect their role requires to be successful.
Connect with other like-minded Brand Managers to widen their understanding and perspective of brand building in a real-world setting.
Get promoted or move up the ranks into a Brand leadership role.

Self Mayd has been created for Brand Managers, by Brand Managers.

When Mandy Hall first started Mayd (nee Chiefs and Indians) it was in response to a perpetuating misconception about what brand strategy is, and what it entails. Over the course of her career (spanning almost two decades), she climbed the ranks as a senior Brand Strategist in her big corporate roles, with budgets to burn, and brands to build. Fed up with the frankenstein of responsibilities her department acquired (hint: anything that couldn’t be measured or mined), and a lack of respect for brand strategy (mostly due to confusion, a lack of collaboration or daily combative measures), she left the corporate rat race to start her own business. Four years on, Mandy and her team have been helping businesses and Brand Managers find their brand’s special sauce and implement it (beyond a marketing a message), from the inside of an organisation, out. After all, a sweet strapline isn’t going to save you from a shonky service.

Mandy’s built some of Australia’s most infamous brands, SMEs and startups, to propel business growth.

Connect with Mandy on LinkedIn.

Brands Mandy’s worked with.

Listen to Mandy’s latest podcast.

How it works.

10 Week Project

3 Project Milestones

No BS Brand Strategy Framework

Project Upgrades

Weekly Content

World-Class Mentors

Peer Working Groups

Milestone Masterminds

Brand Manager Community

Get started in 3 simple steps.

Why we're not like everyone else.

It’s important we make it clear that this is not a course on branding. A) because branding is not brand strategy. And B) because it’s not a course. Nor is it an attempt to replace the holy grail of Brand Management education (eh eh Mark Ritson). You’ll find us somewhere between a dropbox of super useful and relevant videos on how to tackle the core tasks of a Brand Manager and influence others (to get better outcomes), and a kick ass colleague who talks your shop and cheers you on.

Project Outline

Duration 10 weeks.

Brand Problem

Summary: Identifying the issues and opportunities that will fuel or fault your brand strategy.

Weeks 1-4 | Six Tasks

Brand state of play: A reflection on the past, present and future desired state of your brand to get clear on what it is you seek to solve, surrender or set up.
Know your numbers: Like it or loathe it, knowing the historical performance, trajectory and targets of your brand goes without saying, yet many still don’t know where to start. We’ll show you.
Customer needs + nuances: We all talk a big customer-first game, but how well do you really know your buyers? And are they even the ones you want? We’ll share our tips on profiling your unicorn customer in a way that is actually usable by your team.
Competitor blind spots: We go all investigative on your competitors to expose their weaknesses and to shine a light on the most appealing space to occupy.
Bucking biases: Stepping outside of your immediate playground to get an outside view of your customers, category or the context in which your brand exists.
Strategy shapers: The headlines, bold ideas and watch outs that were identified in the 5 previous tasks that will underpin your brand strategy.

Brand Playbook

Summary: More than a coffee table book, your brand playbook is designed for everyday use and sets the path, the tone and the character of your brand to propel business growth.

Whilst a simple google search will return a million ‘how-to’ results for each of the following concepts (including the newest, shiny iteration of the exact same thing but with a different name), we give you a no-nonsense explanation (sans the jargon and puffery) about how to do it in a way that rallies your organisation behind your cause. Hint: less is more and we prioritise clarity and action over colourful, contradictory adjectives that do nothing other than tarnish your credibility with an already cynical and critical audience.

Weeks 5-8 | Six Tasks

Vision: Your true north, higher purpose or big audacious (non-financial) goals.
Brand Values: Your non-negotiables, impression-blasting, guiding principles.
Customer profile: The quirks, perks and pain points of your customers to make better decisions and improve funnel performance.
Competitive advantage: The special sauce to your Big Mac, Ben to your Jerry.
Positioning: The coming together of what you want to be known for, that gets people knowing you.
Brand character: Your distinctive personality, tone of voice and vibe that packs a proverbial punch.

Brand Plan

Summary: Last but not least, your brand plan – the actions that need to occur within your organisation to make your brand positioning true. Words are cheap. A marketing message will only ever be a band aid solution if your business does not walk the talk.

Weeks 9-10 | One Task

Brand planning: To be effective, your brand strategy needs to be adopted by the entire organisation. We’ll show you how to translate it in a way that demonstrates how it is executed across various teams such as sales, customer service and product.

Farewell drinks + virtual networking

Self Mayd

Base Project

$1297AUD (+ GST for those in Aus only)

*BETA* introductory offer

10 week project

All videos, live lessons, workbooks + project content

Weekly Q+As with a qualified Brand Strategist

Milestone Masterminds hosted by your dedicated Brand Strategist

Lifetime access to closed working group

Starts 1 March 2021

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