Brandar Consulting, LLC

Brandar was formed as an independent Consulting Firm in 2007 by Managing Director, Mike Slusar.
Mike is a seasoned licensing and branding professional and former Director of Brand Mgt & Licensing at AT&T Knowledge Ventures. He spent 8 years building AT&T’s licensing program from scratch; leading a team that managed all key licensees in the AT&T trademark licensing portfolio. Over that time period, Mike worked with The Beanstalk Group licensing agency formulating the original AT&T Licensing Strategy, identifying new prospective licensees and executing against AT&T’s annual licensing plans. He was also involved in bidding out AT&T's licensing program representation to a range of licensing agencies on three separate occasions. While at AT&T, Mike was instrumental in negotiating new long term licensing agreements with Citibank for the AT&T Universal Credit Card and VTech for AT&T Telephones; two of the most lucrative brand license agreements ever negotiated. Mike also was responsible for formulating and managing many AT&T Brand Management projects including conducting strategic brand analyses to help plan the SBC/AT&T Merger integration which ultimately led to SBC choosing to use the AT&T brand for the merged company. He also implemented the very first consistent Retail Packaging & Collateral System across all AT&T business units and business partners.

Prior to his stint in Brand Management, Mike had a very well rounded career at AT&T moving through jobs in Direct Marketing, Market Planning, Segmentation and Offer Development, Product Management, Competitive Strategy, Business Planning and Message Positioning. He left AT&T in October, 2007 to start his own Brand Licensing, Brand Management and Marketing consulting practice. Mike joined the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers' Association (LIMA) in 2008.

Prior to his 18 year tenure with AT&T, Mike also spent 3 years with Nabisco Brands in Labor Relations assisting in several labor negotiations. He earned a bachelors degree from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations where he originally honed his negotiating skills. Mike also attended the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University where he earned an MBA in Marketing. Most recently, Mike earned a Certificate of Executive Development from the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania completing courses in Capitalizing on Your Brand Assets, New Product Development, Leading in Turbulent Times, Strategic Thinking and Implementing Strategy.

Brandar Fun Fact:  The Official Winery of Brandar is Adastra located in the Caneros region of Napa, California. Adastra produces a variety of excellent, intense and complex wines. The name Adastra is taken from the Latin saying "per aspera ad astra, "through striving to the stars" which is what Brandar Consulting is all about helping our clients' brands and companies do.