A senior marketing head, for the days you need one.
Two or four days a month of marketing direction for architecture practices, interior design studios, product makers and galleries. Remote, with in-person days planned in advance, and the person in the room is the person doing the thinking.
A fractional CMO closes the gap most design studios sit in. They are too small to justify a marketing director, whose salary would buy a lot of other things, and too particular to hand the decisions to someone junior. So the marketing decisions get made by whoever has a spare hour: a founder between site visits, a practice manager with a full job already, or nobody at all, which is the most common answer.
The result is rarely bad work. It is unowned work. A website that says something slightly different from the feed, a project published six months after it completed, a photography budget spent on the wrong room, a press opportunity missed because nobody was watching for it. None of it is a crisis, and all of it compounds.
What a Fractional CMO Actually Does for a Design Studio
The job is to own the decisions rather than execute the tasks. Which projects get published, and in what order. What the practice says about itself and where that story is inconsistent. How a launch or a completion is sequenced across press, social and the site. What the photography budget should buy this year. Whether the new website is saying the right thing to the right person. Where the enquiries are actually coming from, and what that implies about where the effort should go.
If you are still working out whether the model fits at all, this guide to what a fractional CMO is covers the practical questions first: how the days work, what a retainer typically costs, and when a studio is better served by execution capacity instead.
It is deliberately senior work, and deliberately not delivery. Delivery is what the retainers and the capture days are for, and they can run alongside this or be handled by your own team. What this buys is judgement, applied consistently, by someone who has spent years inside both the design press and design-led marketing.
Remote, With In-Person Days Planned
This is run remotely by design, not by compromise. Work is done across London, Dubai and the design calendar in between, which means presence at Milan Design Week, Downtown Design, Dubai Design Week and London Design Festival is part of the year rather than an expense line on a proposal.
Two in-person days each quarter are included in the fee, planned in advance around what they are actually for: a strategy session, a shoot, a fair, a pitch. Beyond those, travel is arranged as needed and billed at cost. A studio gets a senior marketing head who is genuinely in the rooms that matter to their industry, rather than one who is in an office in their city and nowhere else.
What’s Included
- An agreed number of days each month, held in the diary rather than fitted in
- Marketing and content strategy owned end to end, with a plan you can see
- Publishing and launch sequencing across press, social, search and the site
- Direction on photography, commissioning and where the budget should go
- Oversight of whoever is delivering, whether that is your team, a freelancer or me
- Two in-person days per quarter, planned in advance, with travel beyond that at cost
Best Suited For
- Practices of roughly five to thirty people with no marketing lead and no plan to hire one
- Studios where the founder is doing the marketing thinking and would rather not be
- Brands entering a second market and needing one coherent story across both
- Teams with capable delivery already in place and nobody deciding what it is all for
Being Honest About Two Days
In the wider market, a fractional CMO or fractional marketing lead usually means four to eight days a month. Two days is advisory rather than embedded, and it is described here as exactly that. For a studio that has never had senior marketing direction at all, two properly used days a month is transformative. For a studio that wants a fractional CMO genuinely inside the business, four is the honest minimum, which is why it is offered.
What neither option is, is a way to buy a full marketing function cheaply. If a practice needs forty hours a week of marketing, it needs to hire someone, and saying so is more useful than selling around it.
Owned decisions, on a rhythm.
Orientate
A first month spent understanding the practice, its work, its market and what is already running.
Set Direction
A plan you can actually see: what gets published, when, where, and what it is meant to achieve.
Steer
Monthly days held in the diary, spent on decisions, direction and oversight of whoever is delivering.
Review
Quarterly, in person where it helps, looking at what worked, what did not, and what changes.
Priced by the days, held in the diary.
Days are reserved each month rather than found when there is time, which is the whole point of the arrangement and the reason it is priced as it is.
£2,800
+VAT / month · or AED 18,000
Roughly half a day a week. Senior marketing direction on an advisory footing: strategy, publishing decisions, launch sequencing and oversight. Suited to a studio that has never had a marketing lead and wants the thinking owned by someone senior.
£5,000
+VAT / month · or AED 32,000
Roughly one day a week. The embedded version, for a practice that wants a marketing head genuinely inside the business. More time in the detail, closer oversight of delivery, and a lower effective day rate for the larger commitment.
Both include two in-person days per quarter, planned in advance, with any further travel arranged as needed and billed at cost. Three months minimum, then rolling monthly with a month’s notice on either side, because a lock-in is the provider’s risk to carry rather than yours.
Not just a marketer: an editor, too.
Every brief is shaped by first-hand access to the design world. I also edit martynwhite.co, an independent journal of architecture, interiors, art and collectible design, and cover Dubai Design Week, Downtown Design and Milan Design Week in person. Coverage there is never part of a commercial arrangement.
Fractional Marketing FAQ
How does this work if you are not in our city?
It works the way most senior work has worked for several years now. The days are remote, and two in-person days per quarter are included and planned in advance around something worth being there for. I am at Milan Design Week, Downtown Design, Dubai Design Week and London Design Festival regardless, so a studio gets someone present in the rooms that matter to this industry rather than someone present in one office. Travel beyond the included days is arranged as needed and billed at cost.
Is two days a month really enough?
For a practice that currently has nobody making these decisions, yes, and the difference is usually obvious within a quarter. For a practice that wants someone genuinely embedded, no, and four days is the honest minimum. I would rather say that at the outset than take a fee for a role that cannot be done in the time.
Does this replace whoever runs our social media?
No, and it works best when it does not. This is direction rather than delivery: deciding what gets said, when, and why, then overseeing whoever says it. That can be your own team, a freelancer you already work with, or a retainer with me. Plenty of studios have capable delivery and no one deciding what it is all for, which is exactly the gap this fills.
How is this different from a monthly retainer?
A retainer is scoped: an agreed discipline, delivered to a brief. This is the opposite way round. You are buying judgement on the questions that have no brief yet, and the scope is whatever genuinely matters that month. Studios often run both, with the fractional days setting the direction that the retainer then delivers against.
What is the minimum commitment?
Three months, then rolling monthly with a month’s notice either way. Three months is roughly what it takes to understand a practice properly and show something for it. Beyond that, a long lock-in mostly protects me rather than you, so there is not one.
Do you work with more than one practice at a time?
Yes, but only a small number, and never two who are directly competing for the same commissions. If that would be the case I will say so before we go any further, because the value of this arrangement depends entirely on being able to speak freely.