Fractional CMO for Ad-Restricted Categories in the GCC

Two days a week, in your executive meeting, owning the acquisition number rather than advising on it. I hold two of these seats at a time and no more, which is the entire reason the arrangement works. A fractional CMO carrying six clients is a consultant with a better title and a slower reply. The seat: Budget authority over paid media within an agreed ceiling, and the authority to end an agency contract. Without both, the role collapses into recommending things to someone who can refuse without giving a reason. I have held that version of the job and it produces neither results nor a relationship worth keeping. If your board is not ready to grant it, take the growth audit instead: the same judgement, an honest scope, a third of the cost. I report to the chief executive or the founder. Not to a vice president who is themselves waiting for a permanent marketing hire to arrive above them. First 60 days: Weeks one to three, what we stop. There is always something. An agency retainer funding reports nobody opens. A channel that survives because it was once somebody's idea. A Ramadan campaign scheduled by habit rather than by the day-parting the category actually shows, which in food delivery here concentrates sharply in the hour after Maghrib. The stop list is the first thing I take to the board and it usually covers my fee. Weeks three to six, measurement and one agency review, run properly, with a scorecard the agency sees in advance. Roughly half the time the incumbent keeps the account and performs better, because somebody finally told them what they were being judged on. Weeks six to nine, the hiring plan for the team that replaces me. I want to be out in nine to twelve months. I sit on the panel for the permanent hire, which includes telling you when a candidate you have fallen for is wrong for the stage the company is at. What I will not do in this seat: Present work I did not scope. If I am the marketing lead, I own what goes out, including creative I would rather not defend. Take equity in place of fee. Alongside a fee, gladly. Instead of one, never. The version where I am paid only if it works turns me into someone who avoids saying the hard thing in month four. Carry the title without the mandate: fractional CMO on the website while an internal head of growth keeps the decisions. Work in a category whose rules I do not know. Food and beverage, virtual assets, nonprofit fundraising and marketplaces in the GCC, plus those same categories internationally where the company is Gulf-headquartered. Fintech beyond virtual assets, gaming, pharma: no. Bad fit: Pre-revenue companies. This job is allocating a budget against evidence, and with neither there is nothing here that a good first marketing hire will not do better and for less. Companies looking for someone to repair an agency relationship they are unwilling to end. I will diagnose it once and then recommend the ending, and if that recommendation is unwelcome we have both wasted a quarter. Anyone needing daily availability. I am in your calendar on fixed days, reachable between them for decisions that genuinely cannot wait, and deliberately unreachable for the ones that can. Notice is sixty days in either direction. Month one is not a trial period. If it were, I would spend it being agreeable, and you are not paying for that.