Senior marketing leadership embedded in your team one to three days a week. Strategy, positioning, demand and team, owned end to end. New Zealand, Australia and North America.
A fractional CMO sits at your leadership table and owns marketing. Not a project, not a workstream, the function. Strategy, positioning, pipeline, brand, the team and the agencies, and the number at the end of it.
What that looks like week to week:
BabylonSixty is unusual in one respect. The same person has run product and marketing, which means positioning decisions are made with a real understanding of what the product can actually do. Most fractional CMOs cannot do that, and most fractional product leaders cannot do the marketing half.
The activity looks the same as last year. The results do not.
It worked to a point. That point has passed.
The roadmap and the go-to-market story do not match.
The role is real. The full-time cost is not, yet.
A great deal of output, very little effect.
Especially an ANZ company going to North America, where the positioning that works at home does not travel.
All four are legitimate. They solve different problems, and only two of them own the result.
| Option | What you get | Owns the outcome | Indicative cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fractional CMO | A senior marketing executive one to three days a week, embedded in the leadership team | Yes | NZD 6k–22k / month |
| Full-time CMO | Five days a week, permanent, plus recruitment and equity | Yes | NZD 200k+ package, 3–6 month ramp |
| Consultant | A diagnosis and a recommendation | No | Project fee |
| Agency | Execution against a brief you write | No | Retainer plus media |
| Contractor | A defined piece of work to a defined brief | No | Day rate |
Growth in fractional executive numbers since 2020
Growth in full-time executive numbers since 2020
The full-time hire is the honest comparison, and the risk is the part nobody prices in. A CMO hire that does not work costs you the salary, the recruiter fee, six months of momentum and the credibility of the role internally. Fractional gives you the seniority and the ownership without the commitment, and you can scale the days up or down as the business changes. Read the longer argument on what fractional leadership is.
Every engagement follows the same four stages: Engage, Enhance, Execute, Embed. You know what happens next, and so do we.
An initial meeting, half or full day immersion in your business, where we establish your needs and work out whether we are a good fit.
Planning the plan. Identifying the specific needs and actions that will enhance the performance of your organisation.
Getting the job done. Working with your teams to drive execution of the strategy, tracking performance and measuring results.
Not a spray and walk away model. Embedding processes, governance and ways of working that hold after we step back.
Engage is where we work out whether this is a fit and what the plan looks like. It is a half or full day, at no charge, and you keep what comes out of it.
Engage starts with immersion, at no charge. We spend a half or a full day with you, in person where we can, learning as much as possible about the business and where you want to take it.
Leadership, and whoever runs sales, marketing and product. We hear the problem from each side and look at the numbers you already have.
By the end of the day we both know whether this works: whether we are the right people for it, and whether the problem is one we can move.
You get the brief back: the problem in one page, the outcomes you want, and the plan to get there. Whether we go on together or not, you keep it.
A fractional leader is only useful if they are inside the business, with the team, in the tools and the conversations. This is how we work when we are with you.
Engagements run monthly and are sized in days per week, most commonly one to three days, with a minimum initial term of three months so there is time to do something real. Days can scale up or down as the business changes, and the pattern is agreed up front so your team knows when to expect me.
No media spend, no agency margin, no long tail of change requests. Rates and the full comparison against a permanent hire are on the cost page.
"Darren is an exceptional talent who brings together deep expertise in both product and marketing, with the ability to strategize and execute at the high level. His firm is the ideal partner for a Series A startup."
Full case studies, including the situation, the work and what changed, are on the results page.
A fractional CMO owns your marketing function on a part-time basis, usually one to three days a week. That means setting the strategy, owning the number, running the team or the agencies, fixing the positioning and reporting to the board like any other executive. The distinction that matters: a fractional CMO carries accountability for the outcome. A consultant hands you a recommendation and leaves.
Indicative monthly ranges sit between NZD 6,000 and NZD 22,000 depending on days per week and scope, with Australian engagements in a similar AUD band. Compare that to a permanent CMO in Auckland or Sydney at a six-figure base salary, plus recruiter fees, KiwiSaver or super, equity and a three to six month ramp. See the pricing page for the three engagement bands.
An agency executes against a brief you have to write. A fractional CMO writes the brief, decides whether the agency is the right answer at all, and holds the agency to account. Most companies that hire us already have agencies. We make them work harder.
Inside the first week. Because the job has been done before, several times, there is no learning the category, no waiting for a strategy document and no ramp. The first thirty days are diagnostic and corrective at the same time.
Yes. BabylonSixty is based in Auckland and works with clients in New Zealand, Australia and North America. A US Series A client, Ridge Security, and Australian clients run alongside NZ scale-ups. Remote-first with onsite blocks where it matters.
Typically seed to Series B B2B technology companies, and established firms between permanent CMOs. If you have marketing activity but no senior owner, or a founder still carrying marketing on top of everything else, that is the fit.
Yes, and usually should. Most of the value in the first ninety days comes from giving an existing team clear priorities, a real strategy and someone senior to escalate to.
We help you write the role, sit in on interviews and hand over to the permanent hire. A fractional leader who cannot make themselves unnecessary is a contractor with better business cards.
A 30-minute call. No obligation. No pitch. Just a straight conversation about your business and whether we can help.
Schedule a discovery call