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Marketing breakdowns, in Arabic. 60 of them so far.
Al-Ahsa to Riyadh
Redha Alayesh
Redha Alayesh (رضا العايش) is a Saudi marketing strategist based in Riyadh. He has worked with 40+ marketing departments and founded BMD.
Bio · copy this
Redha Alayesh (رضا العايش) is a marketing strategist from Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia, based in Riyadh. He is the founder of BMD, a consultancy that builds and repairs the marketing function inside Saudi and Gulf companies; behind the practice are 40+ marketing departments, including IBM, Ithra, Alyaseen Agri, the Saudi Esports Federation, Withgrowth and Riyadh Combat Club. Before consulting he started three companies and closed all three, at a cost of more than $300,000 of his own money. He writes and publishes in Arabic and English.
The work
What I actually do.
I start with the org chart, not with campaigns. Who owns which number. What that person is allowed to decide without asking. What gets reported, to whom, on which day of the month. Most companies I walk into have a marketing team and no marketing department, and the difference is not headcount. It is whether a number has a name beside it.
Then the unglamorous part. One definition of each metric that everybody actually agrees on. One reporting rhythm nobody is allowed to skip. A hiring order that does not begin with whoever is easiest to hire. Usually a smaller agency roster than the one I found, because an agency cannot own a number it does not control.
I do this through BMD. Behind the practice are 40+ marketing departments, across the Gulf and outside it. Alyaseen Agri, Ithra, IBM, the Saudi Esports Federation, Withgrowth, Riyadh Combat Club, and others. In each case the work was on the marketing function itself, some of it from the ground up.
The record
I started three companies. I closed all three.
That is the part people leave out of a bio, and it is the only part that actually qualifies me.
| Venture | Role | Status |
|---|---|---|
| BMD (Building Marketing Department) | Founder | Active |
| Business Nokhbah | Co-founder, with Mustafa Alkhamis | Closed |
| Slaysel | Founder | Closed |
| Rwab6 | Founder | Closed |
Business Nokhbah
A Saudi EdTech, co-founded with Mustafa Alkhamis. It started where every Saudi student starts, in Qudurat and Tahsili prep. That worked, so we built the platform underneath it: an LMS, then a marketplace where other teachers could sell. Then it moved again, into academies and HRDF-backed training and apprenticeship programmes. Three different businesses wearing one name.
Slaysel
A marketing agency, with an F&B holding attached to it. I was selling other companies the growth engine I had not yet built for myself.
Rwab6
The third. By then I had stopped being surprised.
Together they cost more than $300,000 of my own money. I am not romantic about it and I do not recommend the tuition.
Here is the part I did not expect. Not one of the three died of a bad product. They died the same way, and it took me until the third to see the pattern: there was always a growth number, and there was never a person whose name sat next to it. Everyone was busy. Nobody was accountable. So the number moved on its own, and mostly it moved down.
So when I started consulting I did not start with campaigns. I started with the org chart. I build the thing whose absence closed my own companies.
The book
I am writing one book, and it has one subject.
It is called Building Marketing Department, and it is the argument on this page at full length: what a marketing department is for, what it is made of, and the order you build it in. It is not finished. I am not going to announce a date for it. When there is something to read, it will be at buildingyourmarketingdepartment.com/resources.
Positions
What I think about marketing.
A department is a structure, not a headcount.
Four people with defined ownership beat nine people who all take requests. When somebody tells me they are "building the marketing team", I ask which number each hire will own. The pause tells me what I am walking into.
Marketing that cannot be measured is decoration.
Not worthless. Decorative. There is a real place for decoration, and it is not in a line item that has to be defended to a board next quarter.
Ownership sits with a person, not with a team.
"The team owns pipeline" means nobody owns pipeline. A number owned by four people is a number owned by none of them, and everyone in the room already knows this.
An agency cannot own a number it does not control.
Agencies are good at the thing you hired them for and structurally unable to own the outcome, because they do not control pricing, product, sales follow-up or the response time on a lead. Give them the input. Keep the outcome.
The org chart is a marketing document.
You can predict most of a company's marketing output from its reporting lines without seeing a single campaign. Where marketing reports, what it is allowed to decide, and who it has to ask, produce the work far more reliably than talent does.
I am wrong about timing more often than about direction.
That is the honest version. I have been early on more calls than I have been wrong on, which is its own kind of wrong, and it is worth knowing about somebody before you take their advice on a quarter.
The obvious questions
How do you pronounce the name?
Redha Alayesh, roughly "RED-ha al-AA-yesh". The middle letter of رضا is ض, which in Gulf pronunciation lands closer to the "th" in "this" than to a plain d, which is why it is spelled Redha and not Reda. You will also see it written Ridha Alayesh, Reda Alayesh, Redha Al-Ayesh and Redha AlAyesh. All of them are me. In Arabic it is رضا العايش.
Where are you from?
Al-Ahsa, in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. I work out of Riyadh, and the work takes me back to the Eastern Province, to Jeddah, and out into the wider Gulf. Some of it has gone further than that.
What do you actually charge for?
Consulting engagements through BMD, on the marketing function: how it is structured, what it owns, how it is measured, and who is hired in what order. Scoped as a piece of work with a start and an end, not as a retainer that quietly becomes a salary. Pricing depends on the size of the company and the state of what is already there, so it is a conversation rather than a page.
What do you not do?
I do not run campaigns, buy media, manage social accounts, or take a monthly fee to be somebody's fractional CMO indefinitely. I do not do free strategy calls, unpaid audits, guest posts or link exchanges. If what you need is execution, you need an agency, and I will say so in the first email.
Do you write in Arabic or English?
Both, separately. The Arabic is not a translation of the English and the English is not a translation of the Arabic; they are written from the same argument in each language, because a Saudi reader can tell the difference inside one sentence. The video work is almost entirely Arabic. This site exists in full in both.
Do you take speaking invitations?
Yes, on the subject of this page and nothing else. Workshops, keynotes and podcasts, in Arabic or English. Email r@redhaalayesh.com with the date, the room, and who is in it.
Disclosures
Who pays me, and for what.
- BMD is my company. Consulting engagements are paid, and BMD invoices them. Every link on this site to buildingyourmarketingdepartment.com is a link to a business I own.
- The newsletter is free. It carries no advertising, no sponsorship and no paid placements, and I am not planning to add any.
- I take no affiliate commissions, and I have never been paid to mention a tool, a platform or a company. If that changes, it will be said in the sentence where the mention happens, not in a footer.
- I hold no equity in any client, and no client holds any in me.
- The companies named on this page are named because BMD publishes them on its own site. The work was on the marketing function, some of it from the ground up. None of them has endorsed me, and none of them reviewed this page.
- The book will be sold. That is the only thing on this site that is being sold to a reader rather than to a company.
Elsewhere
Where else I publish.
One marketing decision, taken apart, every second Sunday.
The numbers I would ask for, the verdict I would give, and where I might be wrong. Written separately in Arabic and English.
Free. Every second Sunday. What you get, and what happens to your address.
The practice
If you want the method rather than the argument, it lives at buildingyourmarketingdepartment.com