To manage the brand as one whole. For Costa, the brand is complex and all-embracing. It is "the whole and the parts" (translated) (Costa, 2012, p. 21). Over time, brand management grew by adding one discipline to the next. In the 19th century, advertising was added to sales management. In the 20th century, branding brought brand management together with product and market management. Costa says that this way of piling one specialist tactic on top of the others no longer works. The brand has become so complex that the solutions "cannot be a set of partial operations" (translated) (Joan Costa Institute, n.d.). Thinking of the brand as a system helps to see it "not as a conglomerate of specialised disciplines and separate activities, but as an organised and coherent whole" (translated) (Costa, 2012, p. 24).

To explain what lies below the surface. At a seminar on brands, Costa heard the brand explained with the image of an iceberg. Only a small tip shows above the water, while a much larger mass lies hidden below the waterline. Costa agrees, but asks what follows from it. In science, metaphors are of little use because they "only compare but do not prove" (translated). For Costa, the functions, mechanisms and laws behind the brand have to be explained, including the hidden part (Joan Costa Institute, n.d.). He admits that such an explanation may seem "too mechanistic" (translated) for a brand, which is a psychological and social phenomenon. But seeing the brand as a structured and dynamic system makes it visible and usable (Costa, 2012, p. 24).

To plan the brand from the inside out. Costa sees the brand as "a strategically planned and managed construction" (translated) (Costa, 2012, p. 21). The company has to plan and start this process. Communication theory calls the company the sender, because it takes the initiative and the risk. It calls the public the receiver, which Costa finds too narrow. The public plays an active, if invisible, role. In the end, it builds "the other half" (translated) of the brand. This half is the brand's image in people's minds (Costa, 2012, p. 21). So the planning starts with the brand's mission and rests on the company's identity, culture and strategy (Costa, 2012, pp. 21–22).

The whole model rests on the idea that the brand is a system. It is "a whole made up of different parts" (translated). Each part has its own function, and all of them depend on one another as they work towards a common goal. The system works because it follows a few basic laws of structure. These laws are governed by the company's identity, which Costa calls its "identity personality" (translated), by its culture and by its overall business strategy (Costa, 2012, p. 24). Five principles shape the model.

• Three levels around a core: at the centre, the core, black in Costa's original, holds the brand's concept and its mission (Joan Costa Institute, n.d.). Around it, Costa places three levels, which he calls infrastructure, structure and superstructure. The infrastructure, the dark grey inner ring, is the base on which the brand rests. It brings together the company's identity, culture and strategy. Costa calls them institutional identity, organisational culture and corporate strategy. The structure, the light grey outer ring, holds the tools for managing the brand. It is "the passage from the company to the brand and from conception to action" (translated). Costa's text also places the brand's financial administration here, although the figure does not show it. The superstructure, the star, is the platform where the brand meets the public, "the visible tip of the iceberg" (translated) (Costa, 2012, p. 22). On his institute's website, Costa counts the core as a level of its own, which makes four levels (Joan Costa Institute, n.d.).
• Hidden rings, visible star: the two rings are round to show that they run through the whole brand project and process. They have no colour, only shades of grey, to suggest that they cannot be seen (Costa, 2012, p. 22). Together with the core, they form the hidden mass of the iceberg below the waterline, which holds up the whole (Joan Costa Institute, n.d.). The star stands for the brand's force, which spreads out in all directions. In Costa's original it is coloured, and its colours show the many messages, media, products, places and relations through which the public meets the brand (Costa, 2012, p. 22).
• Meaning comes first: more and more, what the brand does, its products and services, matters less than how it does it and communicates it. And how it acts and communicates is, in turn, less decisive than what the public understands, values and does with the brand. That is why meaning shapes both what the brand does and how it does it (Costa, 2012, p. 21). For Costa, a brand's meaning combines three things. Positioning is a strategy of the company. Communication is the action that carries out this strategy. The brand image is the picture of the brand in the public's mind (Costa, 2012, p. 21).
• Coherence as the first law: everything the brand shows and exchanges with the public on the star must fit together. Costa calls this coherence "the first law in brand management" (translated). It is what makes the brand "credible, strong and seamless" (translated) (Costa, 2012, p. 24).
• A system that adapts: the system tends towards balance and stability, which help it to grow and to last. To keep them, it must be ready to react to changes inside the company and to what happens outside, such as demands from the public, pressure from competitors or new opportunities. It needs flexibility to adapt and feedback to make the right decisions (Costa, 2012, p. 24).

Costa's own name for the model is the MasterBrand model, Modelo MasterBrand (Costa, 2012, pp. 20, 22). The name Anatomy of the Brand comes from later writing about the model. A systematic review of brand models lists it as Anatomía de Marca and describes it as an anatomy in three levels (Montalvo-Arroyave et al., 2022, p. 184).

Costa created the model within MasterBrand Internacional, a programme in identity, strategy and brand management that he set up. In 2012, it was taught at the Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia (Costa, 2012, p. 20). His institute's website later presents MasterBrand as an online programme of twelve modules (Joan Costa Institute, n.d.).

Work starts at the core. The company defines or redefines the brand's mission with the six questions (Costa, 2012, pp. 21–22). On his website, Costa walks through the model from the inside out. The core holds the concept, the financial studies, the business plan, the objectives and the positioning. The inner ring carries the company's principles into the brand. In the outer ring, right below the waterline, the brand "begins to take shape" (translated). Here, research into the brand's audiences comes first and helps to design the communication strategy. Legal protection, the marketing plan and the branding project follow, and work on the manuals begins. On the star, the brand shows itself, from its name, logos and colours to points of sale, communication, events and social media (Joan Costa Institute, n.d.).

Costa also names the people involved. A management committee brings together the heads of finance, of product or service and logistics, of marketing and of human resources. The DirCom and the communication team are in charge. Outside specialists add research, naming, graphic and industrial design, architecture and interior design, advertising and public relations (Costa, 2012, p. 23). For Costa, seeing the brand as one system lets every specialist find their place and keep the whole in view. This broad, strategic attitude is what the DirCom brings to the brand's success (Costa, 2012, p. 24).

Three published applications show the model at work.

• Crab restaurants in Guayaquil: González Lema and Moncayo used the model to propose branding guidelines for the cangrejales, the crab restaurants of Guayaquil, Ecuador. Most restaurants displayed crab images but offered guests little or no brand experience (González Lema & Moncayo, 2023, p. 211). The authors simplified several elements. Because the restaurants sit close together and serve similar menus, corporate strategy became a single value proposition. Recording visits and talking with regular guests replaced research. The owners cannot build a brand positioning strategy for cultural and budget reasons. So the branding project focused on the verbal and non-verbal skills of staff (González Lema & Moncayo, 2023, p. 226).
• Cooperatives in Ibagué: Varón Rico and colleagues surveyed 280 members of two cooperatives in Colombia and interviewed their managers. They adapted the model by placing three values of the cooperative sector at its centre: responsibility, equality and solidarity (Varón Rico et al., 2023, pp. 139, 141, 144–146).
• Popula Visual: in a student design project in Ecuador, the team worked through all three levels of the model to make the project's new brand known in the local community (Córdova Torres et al., 2022, pp. 2976, 2980–2987).

Costa warns of four mistakes (Costa, 2012, pp. 22, 24; Joan Costa Institute, n.d.):

• Branding as a pile of tactics: piling one specialist tactic on top of another no longer works. The brand has become too complex to be handled by separate, partial operations (Joan Costa Institute, n.d.).
• Neglecting legal protection: if the company does not register the brand, someone else can, and all rights are lost. Without this step, "everything else is lost time" (translated) (Costa, 2012, p. 22).
• Unintended messages: messages the company did not plan can harm the image and reputation of the company or the brand. Training, information, motivation and monitoring inside the company help to keep all brand messages coherent (Costa, 2012, p. 24).
• Unclear responsibility for the web: Costa notes "unfounded doubts and claims" (translated) about who runs the corporate website and the web 2.0. For him, both belong with the DirCom, the guardian of the corporate image and of the brand. Marketing helps with the web 2.0 (Costa, 2012, p. 24).