Most marketing problems look tactical. Almost all of them are strategic.
I spent the first fifteen years of my career inside the agencies that built the marketing playbook Ogilvy, Publicis, Leo Burnett, Grey. The work was good. The credentials were real. And at some point I started noticing a pattern that has only sharpened in the years since: the businesses struggling with marketing almost never had a tactical problem. They had a direction problem.
What they needed wasn't more campaigns, more agencies, or more media spend. They needed someone senior enough to decide what the brand was actually about, and disciplined enough to make the operation deliver on that decision. That observation is why I founded Madvertising in 2018, why I co-founded One Degree Centigrade in 2021 and spent three and a half years scaling it from one outlet to seven, and why I now spend most of my time embedded inside leadership teams rather than pitching from the outside.
The through-line of what I do today is this: brand is a P&L conversation, not a creative one. When a leadership team is ready to treat it that way, almost everything downstream team structure, agency relationships, media allocation, measurement gets easier. The work I take on is with businesses ready to make that shift.
Alongside Madvertising, I teach Brand Management, Integrated Marketing Communications, and Advertising Strategy as Assistant Professor at SZABIST University in Karachi. I've served three editions of the Effie Awards Pakistan jury and sat on the preliminary jury for Shark Tank Pakistan. My writing on brand strategy has appeared in Campaign Asia, Ad Age, Brand Quarterly UK, and Gulf Marketing Review.
Three ways to work together, each matched to a different moment in your business.
Three ways to work together, each matched to a different moment in your business.
Madvertising, 2020 - Brand launch, FMCG health & safety category
Madvertising, 2020 - Brand launch, FMCG health & safety category
Madvertising, 2022 - Strategic benchmarking, banking
Madvertising, 2022 - Strategic benchmarking, banking
Co-founder & Director of Brands, 2021–2024 · Operator-side venture, F&B
Co-founder & Director of Brands, 2021–2024 · Operator-side venture, F&B
Every engagement is different, but the rhythm underneath them shares four stages.
Before anything is designed or delivered, I spend time inside the business — reading what’s been written, listening to what’s being said, looking at what the numbers actually show versus what the team believes they show. This is the stage where the real problem usually surfaces, and it almost never looks like the problem the brief named.
The findings get sharpened into a specific diagnosis — what’s actually broken, what’s working but under-leveraged, and what strategic question the leadership team needs to make a decision on before any marketing work makes sense. This stage ends with a shared understanding of what we’re actually trying to fix.
With the diagnosis settled, we build the direction — brand platform, positioning, go-to-market frame, team structure, measurement priorities. This is where the work becomes tangible. The output here is what the business runs on afterwards, so it gets built with care.
Direction without execution is theatre. Depending on the engagement, this stage is either me embedded inside the team as Fractional CMO owning the execution rhythm, or working alongside your existing marketing lead to make sure the direction holds through the quarters it takes to show commercial outcomes.
Not every business needs a Fractional CMO. The engagements that work best share a specific shape.
Alongside my Fractional CMO work, I design and deliver training that helps people think and operate at a higher level. The goal is not to overwhelm participants with theory, but to change how they see problems and communicate solutions.
My sessions are particularly relevant for corporate teams, managers, and young professionals who need to improve in areas such as:
Essays and observations on brand strategy, advertising, and the commercial realities of building marketing functions.
Recent posts include 'Immature Authority: When We Promote Confidence Faster Than Competence,' 'AI Can Create Influence. But Can It Create Belief?' and 'When Your Product Is Trust, and Trust Gets Recalled.'
External bylines in Campaign Asia, Ad Age, Brand Quarterly (United Kingdom), and Gulf Marketing Review.
Jury member, Effie Awards Pakistan three editions.
Preliminary jury member, Shark Tank Pakistan.
Speaker and panelist at industry events across Pakistan and the region on brand strategy, advertising, and the shift from vanity metrics to commercial measurement.
Assistant Professor, Department of Media Sciences, SZABIST University, Karachi.
Teaching Brand Management, Integrated Marketing Communications, Advertising Strategy, Advertising Research, and Consumer Behaviour at the undergraduate level since 2015. Thesis advisor for BS Media Sciences students.
Workshops can be structured as half-day, full-day, or multi-session programs, and are tailored to your organisation’s context. Each engagement is designed with clear objectives, practical exercises, and room for discussion so that participants leave with both understanding and confidence.
To start the conversation, you can:
Schedule a short discovery call to explore fit and context.
Outline your current situation and objectives over email for an initial assessment.
Invite me to review a specific upcoming decision, launch, or challenge as a starting point.
Workshops can be structured as half-day, full-day, or multi-session programs, and are tailored to your organisation’s context. Each engagement is designed with clear objectives, practical exercises, and room for discussion so that participants leave with both understanding and confidence.
