25+
years in market
Eight roles since 2003, across agency, consultancy and client side — e-commerce, user experience, performance, customer experience, and ultimately the marketing function itself.
ABOUT
25 YEARS OF MAKING MARKETING PAY.
Making people move through smarter and faster AI marketing.
Award-winning CMO and best-selling author with 25+ years of experience leading global marketing transformations for brands, specialising in driving hyper-growth through the integration of business outcomes, data, AI-driven technology, and creativity.
THE SHAPE OF IT
£1BN+
generated
Azlan's own figure, given 2026-09-01. Larger than the case studies on this site total, because only engagements with a verifiable number are published here.
90+
countries delivered in
200+ brands supported. One platform rollout alone ran across 88 countries; marketing has been run across roughly 50 markets including the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Switzerland, the United States and Japan.
1,200
largest team led
A customer experience practice built from nothing to more than 1,200 people through organic growth and acquisition, against a commercial P&L north of £260M.
£20K–£260M+
budgets managed
From a £20K test to a £260M+ commercial P&L, across staff and non-staff cost. The span matters more than either end: the same discipline has to work at both.
8
regions led directly
United Kingdom · Germany · Netherlands · France · Spain · Switzerland · United States · Japan. Localisation is a legal and cultural challenge before it is a translation one.
3
levels of seniority held
Practitioner, executive committee and global board — including non-executive roles. Having sat at all three, the translation between them is the job.
1
best-selling book
Amazon best-selling co-author of “Shift: Transform Motion into Progress in Business”, on marketing and business transformation — plus continuous published writing, research and podcasting.
A £260M P&L and a £20K test have the same challenge: someone has to be accountable for what comes back. I've spent 25 years on that side of the line rather than on the campaign — with executive roles across brand, growth, product and partner marketing, multifunctional teams of up to 1,200 people, and much smaller teams on much smaller budgets where the only thing that mattered was predictable growth.
The customer experience practice I built started with zero employees and finished with more than 1,200 people, partly grown and partly acquired. I've run marketing across 50+ markets and delivered working platforms in 88 countries. Through that you learn quickly that localisation is a legal and cultural challenge before it is a translation one.
I've used creative, data and technology through-the-line with a commercial mindset. With more than a decade on AI and personal experiences, I've shipped things that have driven commercial and brand outcomes — and been pragmatic about, and learned from, the ones that didn't. Most of what I do now is helping board-level executives and marketing leaders decide where AI genuinely earns its place, and then getting it into production to drive business value, without breaking the brand on the way. This is in both B2C direct-to-consumer marketing and B2B account-based experiences.
I'm also a father of two, a golfer of inconsistent quality, train in calisthenics, and I'm part of the GB Aerial team. In and out of work I care most about developing people and winning as a team.
THE HAND I PLAY
Azlan Raj
CMO as a service
- Leadership
- Storytelling
- Commercial
- Strategy
- AI
- Paid media
- Owned media
- Earned media
- Data
- Technology & operations
BRANDS WORKED WITH
- dentsu
- Merkle
- Accenture Song
- Publicis Sapient
- Adobe
- Salesforce
- Amazon
- Meta
- Unilever
- Vodafone
- Sky
- Virgin Media
- Disney
- Aviva
- BP
- Kingfisher
- ASML
- Satair
- Signify
RECOGNITION
CONTACT ME →Powerlist 100
Top 15, Performance Marketing World
Global Top 50
Marketers, PerformanceIN
UK Top 20
Most influential marketers, CXM Today
CX Hall of Fame
Inducted into the CX Hall of Fame
World Record
Guinness World Record, smallest advertisement
Best-seller
Amazon best-selling co-author, “Shift: Transform Motion into Progress in Business”
Advisory boards
Performance Marketing World, ClickZ, Forbes Communications Council and the DMA Customer Engagement Committee
Judge & chair
The Loeries, the DMA, the Marketing Society, Performance Marketing World, and the European & World Series Customer Centricity awards
TESTIMONIALS
CONTACT ME →An absolute creative genius. Works with you to help find the right solution and as part of the process, will tell you if you are on the wrong path — I value his honesty.
Azlan is a methodical, creative & strategic digital professional who has extensive experience in the delivery of high quality commercial & social online environments. Azlan has a clear understanding of the links between business and creative implementation… always driven by business performance and efficiency…
Azlan's energy and passion for his work is second to none. He led key projects with the development team and consistently delivered quality results!
Azlan is quite simply an excellent strategy consultant. Unlike many 'digital creatives', he looks into historical information to identify trends and uncover unique insights which can inform an engagement strategy which works.
Azlan has helped me a great deal with online strategies and ideas. He has the natural ability to predict and deliver the correct strategies for your business…
Azlan is a dedicated UX manager and great guy. He is self-driven, focused, very easy to work with and seems to have limitless energy.