Marketing consultant, Fractional CMO, brand strategy, energetic speaker, foodie, soccer player, and proud Dad

I’m passionate about marketing and building brands, and that energy is evident from the first moment of interaction. My approach combines curiosity with strategic thinking and creative solutions to help businesses stand out and grow through effective marketing.

With over 20 years of experience, I’ve led transformative projects across diverse industries, including technology, medtech, consumer goods, and professional services—serving both B2C and B2B clients. In 2012, I founded Common Giant, where I helped companies harness branding as a competitive advantage in a crowded marketplace.

Throughout my career, I’ve worked client-side managing retail stores up to $52MM in revenue, served as VP of Brand Strategy on the agency side, launched an agency with global clients, and acted as a fractional CMO for multiple businesses. My experience spans branding, marketing strategy, and creative execution across a variety of business models.

"The guy you want in the room." - Former coworker.

I believe in these four core principles:

1 - Marketing is a business practice. 
It’s not just about promotion. Marketing is a series of levers to pull for higher profits.

2 - Know the customer as much as you know yourself.
Understand what, how, and where your customers buy to serve them best.

3 - Grow the orchard while you sell the fruit.
Focus on long-term brand growth while capitalizing on immediate sales.

4 - Boring is expensive.
Mediocre marketing is forgettable, less effective, and costs more in the long run.

Beyond my work with brands, I'm an enthusiastic keynote speaker, delivering engaging talks on branding, marketing, creative problem-solving in business, and effective marketing strategies to audiences of all sizes.

Phillip Oakley

"Product is the ticket to play.
Brand is how you win the game."

I help businesses with great products stop being overlooked and start winning in competitive markets.

Through a clarity driven, no BS approach to strategy led marketing, I turn strong offerings into brands people notice, trust, and choose.

I work with leadership teams to deliver commercial outcomes: clearer positioning, sharper messaging, stronger distinctive assets, and more consistent go to market execution.

With the support of a talented international team, I’ve had the privilege of transforming good products into unforgettable brands...collaborating with industry icons like FIFA, Dr. Oetker, BT, and Ebay, as well as ambitious scale-ups in Tech, MedTech, Gaming, and SaaS.

Along the way, I’ve picked up a few awards, had a lot of fun with incredible client teams, and even shared insights on stages like TEDx, The Global Marketing Summit, and Reflect Festival.

No jargon, no fluff...just strategy, clarity, and branding that actually works (with maybe a bit of humour too).

Because at the end of the day, it’s not about me... or even you.
It’s about building brands that sell, stand out, and make an impact.

Stop Hiding.
Start Branding.

Martin Zarian

The crazy story of how an ugly bottle built a $500k business in 3 months.
WITH NO PAID ADS.

Graza launched in January 2022 with two products: Drizzle and Sizzle.

No fancy heritage story. No "artisan" pretension. Just olive oil in plastic squeeze bottles. (yes yes like Sriracha)

By 2025?

11,000+ retailers. 5th largest national olive oil brand. 24% of total category growth. A brand impossible to not see.

But here's the kicker: they spent $0 on paid ads in year one. So how the hell did an olive oil brand win a commodity war?

They found the gap everyone ignored:

- Fewer than 1% of shoppers could explain what "extra virgin" actually means
- Most had zero brand preference
- Everyone cared about quality, but nobody could judge it

Meaning: No one really cared about brands in the category. A great place to be for a challenger brand. 

But here's where most brands mess up. Even with solid data, they don’t translate it into practical applications. 

They either try to out-luxury the premium players (fancy bottles, "estate-grown" BS) or out-discount the cheap stuff (race to the bottom).

Graza did neither.

They positioned themselves in the high quality, used daily gap. A bastard child between a lambo and a toyota.

Turns out that was the right positioning.
Premium enough to feel good about. Accessible enough to actually use.

Then they made a packaging decision that became a massive growth engine. A fairly ugly, un-original, but practical squeeze bottle. The kind you see in American diners for sauces, but never in the olive oil shelf.

It is the cleanest expression of the positioning.
Brilliant!

That bottle did something no ad campaign could: it increased usage frequency.

More usage = more reorders.
More reorders = higher lifetime value.
Higher velocity = better retail shelf placement.
Better placement = more distribution.

And then...the free media play: that bold green bottle is designed to be recognisable on camera. Every time a food creator films their kitchen, Graza gets a "micro-moment" of brand exposure.

What you need is simple, smart and strategic decisions. Graza’s oil is fairly basic. The one my family produces each year is better.

But Graza positioned it brilliantly and made it the easiest bottle to reach for. That is the game today: 
Average products with amazing positioning.

Stop Hiding, Start Branding. Full-Stack Brand Builder for ambitious companies in complex B2B markets | No-BS strategy, brand, marketing, and activation. PS: I love pickle juice.

Martin Zarian | The incredible story of Graza

10 marketing truths NoBody wants to hear.

One is missing.
3 will annoy you.
One might end up in Q2 deck.

I've painfully watched every single one get ignored, in boardrooms, budget meetings, brand reviews, or agency pitches.

Martin Zarian | 10 marketing truths NoBody wants to hear.

Brand vs Product?
Here's what most B2B companies get wrong.

Your product gets you in the room.
Your brand gets you chosen.

If your B2B strategy still starts with your product roadmap, you're replaying a playbook from the last century: build, push, market.

That worked when choices were few and attention was cheap.

Not anymore.

The "Invent → educate → scale" model is dead. Most markets are saturated. Most products are fine. Good enough. Comparable. Indistinguishable.

Feature parity is the norm. Competitors copy fast. And buyers? They're over it.

Smart companies no longer ask: "How can we sell what we built?"
They ask: "What do our customers need, and what do we stand for?"

The numbers back it up:
→ 90% of B2B buyers choose from brands already in mind
→ Strong brands outperform weaker ones by ~20%
→ Brand-led firms deliver 31% higher shareholder value

Yet many B2B companies still:
❌ Treat brand like a cost centre
❌ Skip customer research
❌ Prioritise features over experience
❌ Organise around products, not people

And then wonder why growth stalls.

The product gets you on the field.
The brand wins the game.

If you're not building a brand, you're just selling a product.
And in 2026, that product is already being undercut by someone with half your features and twice your clarity.

Still leading with your product roadmap?

Martin Zarian | Brand vs Product the B2B battle.

Did you know that we almost lost LEGO in 2000?
The comeback is pretty epic.

In the early 2000s, they were drowning:
- $800 million in debt (≈ 1.51bn today)
- Losing $1 million a day
- Weeks from bankruptcy

And no, it wasn't because kids stopped playing with bricks.
The problem was that LEGO forgot who it was.

After decades of dominating childhoods, they hit the classic "success trap." They expanded in every direction: video games, clothing lines, watches, TV shows, HUUUGE theme parks, even their own digital universe.

This is very common because the mandate for any organisation in the world is to grow its business, and usually this translates into doing more. Waay too often, doing more is not matched with staying on brand.

Business and brand drifted apart, and LEGO became a bloated monster.

- Over 7,000 unique brick types in production.
- Manufacturing slowed.
- Costs inflated.
- Innovation became painful.

By 2003, sales had dropped 30%. A few more months and LEGO would've become a nostalgia case study, another brand we "used to love." 

Then a 35 year old CEO with zero toy industry experience asked one question that changed everything.

The answer was counterintuitive. Uncomfortable. Painful. But guess what? It  strategic. And it's the reason LEGO overtook Mattel to become the world's #1 toy company by 2015.

The full breakdown is in the carousel 👇

Martin Zarian | The comeback story of LEGO

Is there an end to this 0.0% ABV BS?
I don't get it, help me out.

I just saw a report from one of the biggest beverage conferences in the world. The takeaway? Every single brand is going Zero. It's like "AI" for startups, but with better looking packaging and fancy ads.

The data says Gen Z is drinking less, so heritage brands are reacting: "Quick, remove the alcohol!"

But when a 200 year old brand launches a "0.0" version, they aren't just launching a product, they are trading their soul for a seat at a table they, probably, don't belong to.

The result is a list of products that sound like a parody:

- London Dry Air: Expensive perfume for your tonic.
- Single Malt 0.0: A 12-year legacy replaced by 12 minutes of "oak-infused" water.
- The "No-Groni": A digestive stripped of the one thing that actually digests.

To me, it looks like what's happening in the startup world: "the AI driven XYZ". A massive sea of sameness.

Standing your ground beyond trends is a much stronger signal than following where everyone else is going.

This looks like terrible branding to me, or what am I missing?

Rats commit infanticide to survive.
Your brand should too.

Norway rats kill their own pups. "The Nordics" you might say, yes but there is an important lesson for us all here.

Mama rat kills the deformed or weak ones to allocate resources to the healthy. Males kill litters that aren't theirs to bring females back to fertility faster. This is just how the most successful piece of design ever made works: mother nature.

It's not cruelty. It's strategy.

Mark Ritson uses this analogy when he talks to organisations about brand portfolios. He tells them they need fewer brands. They nod. Then he asks which brands they'd kill.

Everyone points fingers at each other like that Spider-Man meme.

"Maybe let's kill the small one?"

Wrong question, he says.

The real question isn't which brand you'll kill.
It's which ones you'll keep.

That reframe usually rocks their world.

Because most companies are grazing in too many fields.
Too many products. Too many sub-brands. Too many purposes. Too many "strategic initiatives."

Too many too many, you get the idea.

- They spread resources thin.
- They confuse customers.
- They confuse employees, investors and so on.
- They dilute what made them memorable in the first place.

Sound familiar? It's the same trap LEGO fell into before they nearly died. Too many brick types. Too many distractions.

They  survived by cutting 30% of their portfolio and doubling down on what actually mattered. Nokia also did something similar, and this is the foundational story for many successful mergers, acquisitions and epic brand comebacks.

Strategic killing feels cruel.
But it compounds growth.

The rat doesn't kill because it's evil.
It kills because focus is survival.

Same applies to your brand portfolio.
Same applies to your product roadmap.
Same applies to your content strategy.

Get into killing.

Martin Zarian | Kill Your Brands (Before They Kill You)

I wasn’t in the meeting.
Still got mentioned in the meeting.

That’s personal branding done properly.

Your content is doing the room work without you.

Creativity is N O T a nice to have in B2B.
It’s a 12x profit multiplier.

Yes twelve X!

We're obsessing over the wrong lever.

I’ve seen a post quoting Andrew Tindall and  Paul Dyson's Creative Dividend report, and it’s pretty shocking.

Brand size sits at number one, mental and physical availability at scale.

But number two? Creative quality. At 12x.

Not media phasing.
Not seasonal optimisation.
Not budget allocation.
Not lead gen.

Creative quality.

And the gap isn't subtle:
- Creative at 12x.
- Budget setting at 5x.
- Multimedia at 2.5x.
- Target audience at 1.1x.

We're chasing marginal gains in targeting while leaving a 12x lever untouched. That's not strategy. That's fear dressed up as efficiency.

Then there's the second number: 60.1%.

Creative quality and media support together explain 60.1% of business results. More than half your outcome sits in two clear but misunderstood variables.

Aka: the strategic strength of the idea and the creative execution of it.
Spend your money and time right there.

The report makes a sharp distinction:
Leaders win on being known.
Challengers win on being different.

Classic positioning theory. If you can’t outspend, you must out-mean and out-create.

Challenger brands are twice as likely to drive share growth when they achieve relative differentiation.

And here's what too many brands miss, especially in B2B: Difference is uncomfortable.

It means having a point of view.
It means saying something category safe brands won't.
It means risking internal tension for external impact.

Creativity does two things: increases the likelihood of return and increases the size of return.

That's not fluffy. That's CFO nirvana.
The data is clear. Brand size matters. Media matters. But the biggest controllable lever most brands  have is the quality of the creative.

So let’s spend less time optimising the spreadsheet.
Spend more time upgrading the creative idea.

PS: I even made a shitty perfume ad for it. He is the new face of creativity in B2B, what do you think?

If you know...you know!
Great reactive marketing from Currys plc.

I love this because it’s a simple and cheap example of a crucial brand fundamental: brands need to be able to move at the speed of life, aka be culturally relevant NOW, not tomorrow.

Results: 1.6m views 49k likes 33k shares >500comments
Kudos to Dan Rubel & Ryan Todd

(If you don't know check the comments for more)

Everyone wants AI speed.
Until it messes up, things badly.

This Reddit post is just one example of the potential cost of bad Ai.

Not just hallucinations in a chatbot. Hallucinations in a reporting layer, affecting badly internal and external impact and wasting 100% of the marketing budget.

The damage is never the model.
It's human.

As we navigate the early days of Ai implementation into our traditional workflows, it is important to plan it properly and understand the difference between data, insight, tools, and decision-making.

Ai will make us lazy, and that's where the difference between productivity and liability lies.

Sure, do implement Ai, we know that's where the world is going, but don’t change your processes: Foundations before cement, Blueprint before prototype, salt before the tequila and lemon after it.

Implement the strategy and governance of it first, then test the tool alongside your traditional workflow. Make the fixes, then ship it company-wise and train the people obsessively on best practices.

Otherwise do not do it at all.
Bad AI is worse than your clunky human process.

At least the human process knows when it is guessing.

non-wanky SEO. Yes, non-wanky. Yes, I know - it’s OK if I’m not for you. Thanks.

I'm just gonna leave this here...


--------------


Image description: post on r/analytics on Reddit saying: 

"We just found out our AI has been making up analytics data for 3 months and I'm gonna throw up.

So we've been using an AI agent since November to answer leadership questions about metrics. It seemed amazing at first fast answers, detailed explanations, everyone loved it.

I just found out it's been hallucinating numbers this entire time.

Our VP of sales made territory decisions based on data that didn't exist. Our CFO showed the board a deck with fake insights. The AI was just inventing plausible sounding percentages.
I only caught it by accident when someone asked me to double check something. I started digging, and holy shit, it's bad."

We're going live in less than an hour:
The Shifts in Branding in the Age of AI.

And I have questions:

- What happens when your founder posts something off-brand before breakfast because ChatGPT made it sound good?
- When your team's AI-generated content looks…well, TERRIBLE?
- When you're producing faster than you're thinking?
- Has AI broken branding?
- Where are designers and CMOs headed?

Today on Watercooler Brand Talks, we're getting into all of it:

– Content overwhelm
– Employees and execs as brand touchpoints
– Why your brand guide PDF isn't cutting it anymore
– How strategy needs to shift from static rules to living principles


This one's going to get spicy. HOT HOT HOOOT!
4pm UK time. Free as always. Full of banter as always.

Link in comments.
See you soon at the cooler.

WAM
Wes X Ash Martin

Brand Storytelling in an AI World | I help marketing teams with AI image and video production without compromising brand equity.

The Shifts in Branding in the Age of AI with Special Guest Scott. A Martin.

The best brand have guardrails.

Some set internally.
Some set by externally.

Over time, those boundaries create trust. Consistency. A recognisable point of view.

But what happens when the founder posts something out of sync before breakfast using ChatGPT or Claude?

When the team experiments with GenAI prompts that technically look and sound “on brand”… but feel slightly off?

When content is produced faster than it can be thought through?

Has AI broken branding?

Or has it simply exposed where there were never real guardrails to begin with?

This week on Watercooler Brand Talks, we’re diving into all of this:

– Content overwhelm
– Distributed channels
– Employees and executives as brand touchpoints
– Why the traditional brand guide might not be enough anymore
– And how strategy needs to evolve from static rules to living principles

Register free and see you at 4pm UK time this Friday.

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Phillip Oakley

Martin Zarian

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Martin Zarian's LinkedIn Performance

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