Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Most senior marketers talk about AI. I'm building it. I've spent 19+ years leading digital marketing - performance campaigns, analytics frameworks, search strategy, agency management - across some of the region's most ambitious brands. I've managed large teams, large budgets, and complex multi-market operations. That part I know well. What's been keeping me busy lately is something different. I've been teaching myself to build. Not just use AI tools - actually build with them. Python scripts. AI agents that automate research and analysis. Tools that track how AI systems talk about brands. Dashboards that turn messy data into clear stories. None of it came from a certification. It came from curiosity, a lot of late nights, and the belief that the best way to understand something is to build it yourself. The direction I'm heading: working at the intersection of deep marketing experience and the ability to build AI-powered tools that actually solve marketing problems. There's a version of this job that doesn't have a title yet. I'm working towards it. If you're thinking about AI in marketing - what it means, what it could do, where it's headed - I'd genuinely love to talk.
Leading digital marketing strategy and operations for one of the world's most recognised destination brands - performance marketing, search, analytics, and agency governance across global markets. Alongside the core role, I've been spending time exploring what AI can actually do for marketing teams: • Building AI agents that automate competitive research - pulling live data, analysing it, and producing useful outputs without manual effort • Developing tools to track how AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini describe brands - a discipline I think of as Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) • Creating dashboards and reporting tools that give teams a clearer picture of market performance across many regions at once • Learning to build and deploy web apps - from Terminal to something teammates can actually open in a browser The experience has been equal parts humbling and exciting. There's a lot to learn, and I'm genuinely enjoying learning it.
Led digital marketing operations across performance, search and analytics for a global destination brand, managing agency relationships and cross-functional delivery across content, IT and commercial teams Achievements: • Improved efficiency by bridging the gap between SEO and SEM, thus increasing traffic by 15%, with no increase in budget • Automated dashboards and reporting using Looker Studio thus saving time to generate reports from different sources, for different audiences • Segregated SEM accounts by market (from 1 to 48), resulting in a reduction in CPC by 15%. • Worked with cross-functional teams (Content, IT, QA) to improve SEO content delivery, thus increasing keyword coverage by 18% on Google.
Dubai’s leading international real estate developer delivering iconic residential, commercial and leisure properties. In this role I was responsible for increasing lead flow and revenue from all digital channels - SEM, SEO, Display, Social and Affiliate, also leading a team of 7 (2 in-house and 5 from agency). Achievements • Delivered high quality leads from Google Ads which resulted in 150% growth in revenue YoY (from $8M in 2017 to $20M in 2018) • Onboarded an agency to handle all SEM and SEO activities – right from RFP creation, review & scoring, procurement process, task setup & reporting. • Maintained the same CPL even though budgets were increased by 200% YoY • Linked leads to specific keywords in Salesforce to better track sales and ROI, resulting in better budget and bid allocation
Etihad Airways is the national airline of UAE with over 80 destinations worldwide. In this role I was responsible for moving the digital marketing function in-house, and setting up teams and processes, which resulted in >$1M/month savings on agency cost. Achievements • Improved tracking and ROI by migrating all SEM accounts (50+) to Google Marketing platform, thus consolidating all activities under single window • Maintained the same “Cost of Sale” despite increasing SEM budget by 50% YoY by investing in routes with high ticket value • Increased revenue by 15% by launching campaigns on non-english search engines like Baidu, Naver and Yahoo! Japan • Reduced Cost of Sales by 15% by optimising complex bid strategies
An integrated agency offering digital marketing solutions with offices in the US, UK and India. In this role I lead a distributed team of 7 analysts and managed 10+ clients ranging from ecommerce, real estate and travel in the US and UK, with a combined annual budget of >$50M. I also developed training modules for the SEM department. Achievements • Maintained the same CPA as before with an increase of 25% in a real estate client's budget. • Improved efficiency and reduced overheads for a travel client by consolidating 60+ Google accounts into 3; managed to get back the performance within 1 month. • Designed and developed SEM training materials and provided training to 15+ team members
A marketing agency offering SEO and SEM services with clients based out of the US, UK and Australia. My role was to develop the SEM offering of the company and setup teams to improve this service. Achievements • Organized SEM accounts based on keywords resulting in 75% increase in leads (from 900 leads/month to 1575 leads/month) • Decreased cost-per-click by 20% within 1 month, by increasing relevance within keyword groups and ads.