Three ways to work with us. One standard of delivery

how we engage

Every Cerebratum engagement — regardless of model — is principal-led, implementation-included, and built around your specific brief. We don’t have a standard package. We have a standard of work. What varies is the structure: how long we’re in, how deep we sit, and what accountability looks like. The three models below cover most of what our clients need. If none of them fits exactly, we’ll tell you that too.

Whatever the model, three things never change.

Principals do the work

The person you meet at the start is the person in every meeting, on every deliverable, accountable for every outcome. No handoffs. No juniors on your brief.

Implementation included

We do not stop at the recommendation. Every engagement includes the execution of what we design — the plan, the process, the measurement, and the correction when reality diverges from the model.

Capability left behind

The measure of a good Cerebratum engagement is that your organisation can do things after we leave that it could not do before we arrived. We build for independence, not dependency.

model 01

Fractional CXO

A senior leader — CMO, COO, Sales Head, CHRO, Product Head, or Chief Transformation Officer — embedded in your organisation for a defined number of days per week. They carry the same KRAs a full-time hire would. They attend the same meetings. They own the same outcomes. The only difference is the cost structure and the absence of hiring risk.

This model works best when you need CXO-grade thinking and leadership but the business isn’t ready — or doesn’t need — a full-time appointment. It’s also the right model when you’ve tried the full-time hire and found that what you actually needed was the experience level, not the headcount.

Right for you if…

  • You need CXO-grade leadership but not a full-time hire
  • You’re scaling and the function doesn’t yet exist in your org
  • Your current leader needs a senior partner to think alongside
  • You’ve had a departure and need experienced cover while you search
  • You want to test the function’s potential before committing to headcount

roles available

CMO · COO · Sales Head · CHRO · Product Head · Chief Transformation Officer · Chief Sustainability Officer

Right for you if…

  • You need an entire function, not just a leader
  • Marketing, in particular, needs to run end-to-end without internal headcount
  • You want one senior point of contact accountable for the full output
  • Your current agency relationship isn’t working and you don’t know why
  • You’re spending on marketing but can’t connect the spend to results

currently available for

Full marketing function — strategy, calendar, creative, media, and measurement

model 02

Outsourced Function

When you need more than a leader — when you need the entire department without the overhead of building one. We run the function end-to-end: strategy, planning, creative direction, vendor management, media, and measurement. One senior principal accountable for all of it.

Today, the outsourced function we offer is marketing. It is the discipline where the gap between what businesses need and what they’re getting from agencies and in-house teams is widest — and where a principal who has built and run marketing functions across industries creates the most immediate impact.

model 03

Transformation Projects

Time-bound, fixed-fee, defined-scope work. A rebrand. A turnaround plan. A GTM launch for a new product or market. An ESG roadmap. A customer-success system built from scratch. Each project is part strategy, part execution — and always seen through to delivery.

Fixed-fee means you know the cost before we start. Defined scope means there’s a clear deliverable we’re both accountable to. And principal-led means the person who scoped the project is the person who delivers it — not a project manager reading a brief they weren’t in the room for.

Right for you if…

  • You have a specific, bounded problem that needs solving
  • You want a fixed cost and a defined deliverable, not an open retainer
  • You need senior hands on a high-stakes initiative — a launch, a pivot, a recovery
  • Your board or investors need an external perspective on strategy or performance
  • You’ve done the thinking and need someone to take it through execution

typical project types

Rebrands · GTM launches · Turnaround plans · ESG roadmaps · Customer success systems · Market entry strategy

Not sure which model fits? That’s what the first conversation is for.

Most clients come in knowing they have a problem but not which engagement structure makes sense. We’ll tell you plainly which model fits — and if none of them does, we’ll tell you that too.