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You've built genuine regional commercial exposure in FMCG marketing; the gap now is proving you can own the P&L, not just the plan.

Your profile reads as a genuinely regional FMCG marketing operator: multi-country brand ownership, real trade engagement with sales, and a blend of multinational and regional-business experience across the GCC and Levant. What a hiring panel will not yet see on paper is direct accountability for pricing, margin or a brand P&L, which is precisely the scope your stated target implies you want next.

Twelve years across the GCC and Levant, moving from Halstead's multinational structure into a regional business, gives you a credible blend most single-market candidates lack: multinational rigor plus regional agility, Arabic and English fluency, and direct experience rebuilding a go-to-market approach after a distributor transition in Saudi. A search partner reading this CV would place you as a strong multi-market Senior Manager who already collaborates commercially with sales, not a marketing generalist running campaigns in isolation.

The stretch you're describing, a Head of Marketing mandate with full brand P&L in a business with real regional scale, is a genuine step up from what's currently on paper. Your record shows you own the marketing plan, the trade and media budget, and the agency roster; it does not yet show you making pricing or margin calls yourself. A panel assessing you against that brief will likely test exactly this distinction, and right now the strongest evidence you have (the Saudi pricing and GTM rework) sits inside a plan-management title rather than a P&L one.

Team scope is the other thing worth naming plainly: four direct reports is consistent with your current title, but most regional Head of Marketing or Director mandates carry a broader team or cross-functional span. None of this means the target is out of reach. Your progression has been consistent, you were selected for a regional leadership programme, and you have the market breadth many candidates for these roles don't. It means the next 12 to 24 months are about making commercial ownership visible, not about proving you can do the job you're already doing well.

1. Multi-market commercial ownership
   You run brand strategy and a real trade/media budget across three FMCG markets, including rebuilding pricing and the go-to-market approach with sales after Saudi's 2023 distributor transition, which is deeper commercial exposure than most peers at this level show.
2. Multinational-to-regional trajectory
   Moving from Halstead Consumer Brands into a regional business, across UAE, Saudi, Egypt and the Levant, with Arabic and English fluency, gives you a breadth of market and organisational context that's rare and directly relevant to regional leadership mandates.
3. Operational commercial discipline
   Running the full agency roster and introducing performance reviews that cut blended media cost shows you manage commercial trade-offs, not just creative output.

1. Build the commercial vocabulary the table expects

   Gross margin, trade spend return, price elasticity: get fluent enough to argue a pricing call with a finance director rather than translate one, because that fluency is what separates a marketing lead from a commercial one.
2. Make strategic influence visible beyond marketing

   Present the Saudi GTM rebuild and the haircare reposition to sales and finance leadership in commercial terms, so your influence is documented outside the marketing function.
3. Close the team and scope gap before the market tests it

   Look for a chance to expand your remit, such as absorbing category coordination, so your team footprint matches the regional leadership title you're targeting.

1. Turn the Saudi GTM rebuild into your P&L proof point.

   You already renegotiated pricing architecture and rebuilt the joint business plan with two national retailers after the 2023 distributor transition, which is the closest thing on your CV to margin ownership. Translate it into numbers before your next interview: what pricing calls you made, what commercial impact followed, and what you'd want full authority over next time. This directly answers the P&L gap between your CV and the Head of Marketing brief you're chasing.
2. Ask Tamra directly whether you can own one brand's P&L before you go external.

   You already run the plan and budget for three brands; the missing piece is pricing and margin accountability. Ask your leadership whether you could take that on for one brand for two or three quarters. A yes closes your biggest gap on the exact role you've described wanting; a no tells you plainly where the ceiling sits here and confirms the external search is the right call.
3. Screen every live process for whether marketing owns the commercial conversation, not just the campaign one.

   You've said explicitly you want a leadership team that treats marketing as commercial rather than decorative. At the appropriate stage, ask directly who currently owns pricing and margin decisions for the brand, and where marketing sits in that discussion. A business that ring-fences pricing away from marketing won't deliver the mandate you want, however senior the title on offer.

Your current package sits meaningfully below the minimum you've set, which effectively rules out a lateral move and requires the next role to bring a genuine scope step. That's a coherent position given what you've said you want, a Head of Marketing role with real P&L ownership, but it means you're pricing yourself against a mandate that isn't yet visible on your CV.

1. Before any offer conversation, establish directly whether the role's compensation reflects true P&L accountability or plan management only.
2. If a package lands close to your floor, negotiate for defined P&L ownership or a clear path to it within the first year, not just base salary.
3. If a role offers the commercial mandate you want but the number falls short of your floor, weigh the scope step deliberately rather than defaulting to the figure.

The Saudi distributor rebuild and pricing rework you led are exactly the kind of story that earns a Head of Marketing brief a hearing, but right now they live inside a marketing-plan title rather than a P&L one. Decide in the next few months whether you build that P&L evidence inside Tamra first, or let the external search do it for you instead. Either is a legitimate path; drifting between the two while actively applying is not.