The Work
Mark's work spans two decades inside one of the world's most complex media portfolios and a current advisory practice working with founders, growth-stage companies, and specialist organizations. In each case, the real work wasn't the campaign or the product. It was building the alignment underneath it.
At a certain scale, orchestration becomes more valuable than accumulation
Current Advisory Work
Fractional CMO & Portfolio Strategist
The advisory practice works with organizations where the challenge is building strategic clarity and commercial narrative — creating the conditions for growth rather than managing growth that already exists at scale.
Niloom.ai — Positioning Architecture for a New Category
Spatial computing is a genuine new category. The hardest problem isn't the technology — it's the commercial narrative. As Fractional CMO, the work was defining positioning that held simultaneously across XR creators, enterprise clients, and investors: three audiences with different vocabularies and different definitions of value. The go-to-market architecture, messaging frameworks, and investor communications were built to work across all three without fragmenting into disconnected pitches.
Kōawa Studios — International Positioning for a Complex Creative Organization
A world-class virtual production facility at the University of Canterbury — part academic institution, part commercial studio, part creative innovation hub. Almost no international market awareness.
The work: positioning that translated an organizationally complex offer into a clear narrative for international clients who had no existing frame of reference for it. Messaging frameworks. Partnership infrastructure. The gap between what an organization genuinely is and what the market understands it to be is almost always a positioning problem before it's anything else.
Enterprise Work
Paramount Global & Nickelodeon International
Twenty years at the centre of a portfolio spanning MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Paramount+, and Pluto TV. Two distinct chapters. One consistent challenge: how do you create compounding enterprise value across a system of brands, platforms, and markets that is
Chapter 1 — Nickelodeon International
SpongeBob, TMNT, Dora, Kids' Choice Awards, Slime Fest — each a globally recognized franchise with its own audience, licensing business, and commercial trajectory. The work was building an IP ecosystem where investment in one property strengthened the others — and where the commercial infrastructure connecting content, licensing, distribution, and live experiences was worth significantly more than any single piece.
The SpongeBob tenth anniversary campaign — a global content and calendar strategy, tentpole events, and market toolkits that let every function rally around shared moments — became the template for how the broader portfolio ran. Local markets adopted, embraced, and adapted. The global system held.
33% growth in branded revenue categories. A $500M+ partner ecosystem embedded across multiple franchises. Partners invested across the whole system, not individual titles.
Chapter 2 — Paramount Global
At Paramount, the challenge scaled — and became more complex. Established brands in MTV, Nickelodeon, and Comedy Central with global distribution relationships built over decades. Pluto TV and Paramount+ as emerging streaming platforms entering the same markets through the same partner networks.
The work was building the commercial and marketing infrastructure that could hold all of it together coherently: a centralized international distribution and affiliate marketing function — 75+ people across brand, commercial marketing, and partnerships — where brands had previously operated independently. Partner strategies that supported the portfolio while creating space for streaming platforms to establish themselves. All of this across 180+ markets simultaneously, at different stages of platform adoption.
6–12% year-over-year growth across sales, sponsorship, licensing, and distribution. Partner relationships that expanded from individual brand deals to portfolio-level commercial agreements.
"What would normally take weeks to shoot, only took days —
it was incredible."