Guest · Experiential and events
Azlan Raj
Chief Marketing Officer, EMEA, dentsu
Azlan Raj is Chief Marketing Officer for dentsu across EMEA, where he rebuilt the network's marketing function from the inside out around a single brief: do for ourselves what we do for our clients. A former tennis coach turned digital strategist, he is a Forbes Communications Council member, an Amazon bestselling author, and one of the people redefining how a B2B agency brand can engage the senses.
About
Azlan Raj is the Chief Marketing Officer for dentsu across EMEA, responsible for positioning one of the world's largest agency networks as a leader in people-centred transformation. A former tennis coach turned digital strategist, he brings over twenty years of experience spanning brands, agencies, and consultancies to a role that demands the same versatility he once applied on the court: reading the situation, adapting in real time, and communicating with clarity across every level of an organisation.
Azlan studied at the University of West London and the University of Northampton, funding his studies by coaching tennis to players of all levels, including celebrities. Those early communication skills proved foundational. He moved into marketing through above-the-line work before progressively shifting into digital, performance, data, and strategy across a succession of consultancies and client-side roles including Accenture, Publicis Sapient, and Barclaycard.
His path into the dentsu network came through Merkle, where he led the EMEA customer experience practice and grew the regional capability to over 1,200 people in three years. When the opportunity arose to become CMO for dentsu UK and Ireland, the brief was deceptively simple: do what we do for our clients for ourselves. Azlan centralised the marketing teams across dentsu's portfolio of brands, including Carat, iProspect, dentsu X, dentsu Creative, Merkle, and Tag, restructuring around two pillars: brand marketing and communications, and experience marketing. The reorganisation put client needs at the centre rather than individual brand silos, mirroring the people-centred transformation dentsu advocates for its own clients.
The results have been distinctive. Azlan's team created dentsu's flagship annual event, Seicho (meaning "growth and open" in Japanese), designed not merely to be seen but to be felt. Attendees walked through spaces infused with a bespoke cherry blossom scent, past artistic installations, and into environments where staging, colour palette, and tone were calibrated to create a sensory brand experience unlike anything else in the agency world. He is now exploring licensed scent branding for offices and even out-of-home advertising, pushing the boundaries of how a B2B brand can engage the senses.
Beyond dentsu, Azlan is a recognised thought leader and member of the Forbes Communications Council, the Performance Marketing World Advisory Board, the ClickZ Advisory Board, and the DMA Customer Engagement Committee. He has been named in PerformanceIN's Global Top 50 Marketers, the UK's Top 20 Most Influential CXM Leaders, and the Performance Marketing World Powerlist 100. He is co-author of the Amazon bestselling book Shift: Transform Motion into Progress in Business, which outlines a practical framework for delivering exceptional customer experiences through aligned vision, teams, and market understanding.
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Career21 years
- 2024 to now dentsu Chief Marketing Officer, EMEA
- 2023 to 2024 dentsu Chief Marketing Officer, UK and Ireland
- 2020 to 2023 dentsu / Merkle Chief Marketing Officer, CXM EMEA
- 2016 to 2020 Merkle VP then SVP, Customer Experience, EMEA
Show earlier roles: Accenture Interactive, SapientNitro, Agencies and consultancies
- 2014 to 2016 Accenture Interactive Head of Digital Marketing Operations, EALA
- 2010 to 2014 SapientNitro Marketing Analytics and Strategy
- 2005 to 2010 Agencies and consultancies Digital engagement, UX and customer-engagement roles
How Azlan thinks4 convictions
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Feel it, don't just see it
Azlan treats brand as a sensory experience rather than a visual identity. At Seicho, dentsu's flagship annual event, the room carried a bespoke cherry blossom scent, an artistic cherry blossom installation, and staging, colour palette and tone all calibrated so attendees felt dentsu before they could name why. He is now exploring licensed scent branding for offices and even out-of-home, on the principle that marketing can engage every sense, not just sight.
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Character beats skill set
With the number of skills a marketing team now needs, Azlan hires for mindset over capability. The skills that mattered yesterday are not the ones that will matter tomorrow, so the trait he prizes is a proactive disposition: the willingness to break the muscle memory a person has built and adapt to how marketing works now. Character, in his framing, is what lets a team keep pace with change.
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Dragon's Den for innovation
Azlan protects a fixed share of budget for innovation and makes his team compete for it, pitching ideas as individuals or groups. The idea can be operational or creative, but it has to tie back to business and client impact, with a forecast and a payback period attached. One winning pitch reimagined dentsu's event stands as reusable and sustainable, costed out with its knock-on effects across the business. The discipline keeps creativity ambitious and commercially honest at once.
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Win or fail together
Azlan runs measurement as a team sport. Rather than give each leader their own targets, he sets a single shared KPI across the function, so a shortfall in one area becomes everyone's problem to solve. He pairs that with a focus on outcomes over vanity metrics, watching signals like average order value to read whether the work is reaching the C-suite, because the measures you choose end up driving the behaviours you get.
