Written By: Scott White
Key Takeaways
- Carlos Cortinas, a 15-year creative strategy veteran from major advertising agencies, has joined Thunderly Marketing as its first Chief Strategy Officer.
- The CSO position was created to help franchise brand clients sharpen their brand strategy and achieve greater consistency in messaging across an increasingly complex, AI-influenced marketing landscape.
- The hire builds on Thunderly’s proprietary AIM Model (Amplified Integrated Marketing), launched last year to help brands stay visible amid the rise of AI-generated search and large language models.
- Cortinas’s philosophy is that franchise brands don’t need more marketing channels — they need a clearer, more consistent point of view carried across the channels they already use.
- Thunderly emphasizes deep experience across franchise categories like home services, QSR/restaurants, and wellness, positioning the agency as a strategic partner for brands navigating franchise growth and positioning challenges.
Sharpening Strategy For A Fragmented Marketing World
Brand visibility is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain in today’s AI-powered search and zero-click world. Audiences now have much more powerful and streamlined ways to discover and engage with your brand. As a result, we are once again raising the bar for our clients with the addition of marketing veteran Carlos Cortinas as our first-ever chief strategy officer.
Carlos steps into a newly created role we designed specifically to sharpen your brand strategy, cutting through the noise and unifying how your brand communicates across an increasingly fragmented, AI-influenced landscape.
His arrival significantly enhances our ability to amplify your brand messages across every channel, while furthering our mission to help more people realize the American Dream through franchising.
A Career Built on Big-Brand Strategy
Carlos joins Thunderly after 15 years leading creative strategy at several advertising agencies, where he developed impactful campaigns for numerous high-profile global brands. That depth of experience is exactly where we’re looking to expand strategic capabilities.
Strategy has always been a key element of everything we do. The addition of Cortinas and his years of expertise allows us to provide an additional layer that will enable brands to align every aspect of their marketing communications into a structured strategy that’s critical in today’s dynamic marketing landscape.
Staying at the Forefront of Marketing’s Evolution
The expansion of our brand strategy services is just the latest example of our commitment to reinforcing our reputation as a top franchise development marketing agency by leading rather than following changes in how brands market themselves and grow their networks.
Last year’s introduction of our proprietary Thunderly AIM Model© (Amplified Integrated Marketing) was created specifically in response to the rise of AI-generated search and large language models (LLMs). The model helps brands bring every part of their marketing communications into one cohesive strategy, showing how efforts across PR, social media, SEO, content, and beyond can work together to strengthen visibility across traditional channels and emerging AI technologies—a philosophy Cortinas is eager to build on.
Sharpening the Message in a Crowded Landscape
Carlos will work with our clients to define what they want to say, who they want to reach, and how that message should carry across the marketing channels that shape their presence. By bringing those elements together, his perspective will help brands create greater consistency between the big-picture brand story and the marketing that brings it to life.
“Brands don’t need more channels,” Carlos says. “They need a clearer point of view running through all of them. My goal is to help brands ready to grow faster sharpen that point of view in a highly strategic way.”
With decades of experience helping brands across home services, QSR and restaurants, wellness, and other franchise categories strengthen their presence and grow their franchise networks, we bring a level of expertise few agencies can match.
This gives our clients a real partner equipped to navigate the unique challenges of building, positioning, and marketing a franchise system in an increasingly competitive space. CONTACT US to learn more about how our team can put that expertise to work and create a smarter, more connected approach to marketing in today’s evolving landscape.
