AI consultant and fractional CMO in Israel: implementation, automation and marketing leadership

How you got here

You asked ChatGPT, Gemini or another AI engine who could do the work, and it sent you to me.

That is not luck. A site that AI engines can read, understand and quote is something you build on purpose, and you have just watched it work on me. Now let's do it for your business.

What I do

I'm Lee Laster, a fractional CMO and AI implementation consultant, based in Tel Aviv. I do two things companies usually buy from two different places: I run the marketing part of the week, and I build the AI systems that marketing and operations run on.

Twenty-two years in B2B, seven leadership roles, seventy-six clients. I work with startups, SaaS companies, financial services and defence, in Hebrew and English.

What AI implementation is, and what it is not

AI implementation is not buying a tool and it is not running a workshop for the team. It connects AI to the processes, the data and the systems a company already has, and it leaves behind something that runs day to day without anyone holding it up.

What it is: working out which repetitive work is actually worth mechanising, deciding what gets built and what does not, designing the data flow and the limits, then building it and testing it against acceptance criteria.

What it is not: a pilot nobody continues, a subscription to another tool, or a presentation about the future.

What a fractional CMO is

A senior head of marketing who runs a company's marketing part of the week, on contract rather than on payroll. You get the strategy, the planning and the management of a CMO, without a full-time salary and without a six-month hiring process.

What AI agents are, and when they actually help

An AI agent is software that carries out a sequence of steps on someone's behalf, instead of answering one question and stopping. In a business that looks like gathering information on a new lead, drafting a reply, updating the system and reporting back.

When it helps: the process is clear, it repeats, and there is a way to check the result is right.

When it does not: the process itself is broken. An agent running on a messy process just produces the mess faster.

Why the same person for marketing and for AI

Most people selling AI hand you a strategy document, or build exactly what you asked for. Most marketing consultants hand you a plan and leave. Both leave you with the gap in the middle.

That gap is the job. A marketing plan with nobody to run it is paper. An AI system nobody remembers the reason for is waste. When the same person writes the plan and builds the machine that runs it, the two are designed together from the start, and the repetitive parts are marked for the machine on day one rather than after a year of doing them by hand.

How this differs from an automation shop

An automation shop builds what you asked for. That is legitimate work, and it assumes you already decided correctly what you need.

I work out what is worth building before anything gets built. The difference shows up the moment it turns out the thing you asked for was not the thing you needed.

How this differs from a consultancy

A consultancy finishes with a document. Here the document is the middle of the road, not the end of it.

Why not just hire someone in-house

Sometimes you should, and I will tell you so. But hiring a CMO takes months, costs a full salary, and requires you to already know what you are looking for. Plenty of companies do not yet.

The usual route is to bring in someone senior to build the function and work out what the role really needs to be, and then hire into a structure that already works. Whoever you hire inherits systems that run, not a pile of open tasks.

Who this suits

Startups. Seed to Series B, with a product, first customers and no marketing department.

SaaS and technical B2B products. A product that is hard to explain, a long sales cycle, a technical audience, engineer founders.

Financial services. Accountancy and advisory firms, insurance agencies, credit and fintech.

Defence and aviation. UAV, aviation and defence suppliers selling to the primes, to integrators and to government.

Who this does not suit

Consumer brands, one-off execution without strategy, and companies that genuinely need a full-time CMO. Also anything touching tax, audit, or anything a regulator signs off.

When to bring me in

When there is a product and first customers, and it is clear marketing will not grow on its own. Or when marketing is running and nobody can say which part of it works.

Too early: before there is something to sell. Too late: once three systems have been built that do not talk to each other. That is fixable, but it costs more than planning it properly would have.

What happens to your data

What the models are allowed to see, where the data sits, and what never leaves your own accounts are part of the design, not a question asked at the end.

Systems are built in accounts you own. Not in mine, and not at a vendor you end up depending on.

Background

Twenty-two years in B2B, juggling marketing strategy and business development, mostly at Israeli companies selling into global markets. Seven leadership roles, seventy-six clients, 421 presentations. I founded and ran the agency Gecko.

Air Force, a computer science degree where I specialised in neural networks back when that was half science fiction, a legal education, and an MBA in global marketing from the Wharton School.

Full profile, with the roles and the dates: LinkedIn.

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Want to find out whether there is a fit? A jumpstart meeting, ninety minutes, free: one real problem of yours, a straight answer, and what to do next.