Adrian M. Peticila. CMO and brand strategist. I find where brands lie to themselves.
You're here for one of three reasons: someone passed my name along, you found something I wrote, or you're doing due diligence before a conversation. All three are fine.
20 years in marketing. 3 CMO tracks in financial services, fintech, and B2B software. 29 brands built or repositioned across 20+ markets, on 5 continents.
Currently CMO. I find where a brand is lying to itself. Say it plainly. Fix it. Founder of Aah, Monster!. I apply the same thinking to the person running the company. If there's a fit, you'll know after three minutes on this page.
- 48h
- Brand audit turnaround
- 29+
- Brands built
- 20+
- Years in marketing
- 20+
- Markets
- 7
- Projects running
- 6
- Years running aah.monster
- 5
- Continents
- 4
- B2B sectors rebuilt
- 3×
- CMO track record
- 3
- Working languages
- 1
- True thing per brand
- 0
- Vague deliverables
↓ scroll
Who I am
Hardboiled.
Allergic to BS.
If you got here from a recommendation, a post, or a search, you want to know if the substance matches the signal.
It does. Here's the short version.
In my 20+ years of direct experience in marketing, PR, communications and brand building across financial services, fintech, software, and B2B. I've personally built marketing functions from nothing and rebuilt ones that were bleeding deals in silence.
Cynical enough to tell you when your positioning is garbage.
Experienced enough to fix it.
Not a coach. Not a framework seller. A working CMO with a track record
and zero patience for credentials that don't do anything.
According to Forrester's 2023 B2B Marketing Report, 63% of enterprise deals stall due to unclear positioning — not product quality. That's the gap I work in. LinkedIn's 2023 B2B Thought Leadership study found that companies with active executive voices see 2× higher engagement on corporate content and significantly more qualified inbound.
Brand architecture.
Applied.
- Positioning people and companies so they stop sounding like everyone else.
- Finding the one true thing about a brand and making it impossible to ignore.
- Building marketing functions from zero — strategy, team, channels, results.
- Turning 20+ years of pattern recognition into decisions that take others months to reach.
- Writing copy that doesn't make me cringe three days later.
Direct.
Async. No fluff.
Through Aah, Monster! I work with C-suite executives and founders who need a brand that holds up under scrutiny. No calls. No workshops. No fluff. Written deliverables, straight feedback, outputs you can act on. The same brand architecture thinking that built real company brands, applied to the person running the company. If you have a brand problem, you know where to find me.
Who this is for
Junior professionals. People who want a logo and call it a brand. Anyone looking for a yes-man. If your positioning is broken, I'll say so. And then fix it.
I've personally reviewed hundreds of positioning briefs over 20 years. The pattern is consistent: too broad, too safe, too interchangeable with the competitor one tab over. The fix is never more creativity. It's more honesty about what the brand actually is and who it's actually for. That's the only thing I do. No retainers, no workshops, no 12-week programs. Written diagnosis, written fix, 48-72 hours.
11 engagements. what happened.
See the work →Uncliché Your Brand
Not a process. Five positions. The difference between brands that travel and brands that stay in the room.
Clichés were true once.
Every industry cliché started as someone's original thought. It worked. Got copied. Became wallpaper. The first move isn't creativity — it's recognizing what you've been borrowing without noticing.
One true thing beats five brave ones.
You don't need a platform. You don't need a content strategy. You need one thing that's actually true about you and nobody else is saying. Everything else is decoration.
Your category has a voice. It's not yours.
Fintech sounds like fintech. Legal tech sounds like legal tech. You absorbed it. Now you sound like the competition without trying. Unclichéing starts with identifying what your category made you say.
Specific is the new original.
You can't out-creative your competitors. You can out-specific them. The more precise you get, the harder you are to imitate. "We help businesses grow" is a cliché. "We help mid-market Polish IT firms stop competing on price" is a position.
Authority isn't announced. It accumulates.
Nobody believes you when you say you're an expert. They believe you when you've said the same thing, in your own words, consistently enough that they say it about you. That's when positioning becomes identity.
After working with me
29 brands repositioned. The pattern is consistent.
Your messaging stops sounding like your competitors.
You stop explaining yourself. You start positioning yourself.
One sentence. Ten seconds. Everyone who hears it remembers it.
The people you want start finding you.
Prices go up. Justifications go down.
You stop changing direction every quarter.
Find me
Right now
Press
FAQ
What do you actually do?
Marketing strategy and brand positioning. Day job: CMO at a B2B software consultancy. Side work: personal branding for C-suite and founders through aah.monster. Also building software products.
Are you available for consulting?
Yes, through aah.monster. I work with C-suite and founders on brand positioning and messaging. Deliverable: a written document — brand audit or positioning brief. No calls, no meetings, everything async. Turnaround: 48-72 hours for audits.
What industries have you worked in?
Financial services, fintech, B2B software, IT outsourcing, capital markets, investment, legal tech. Across 20+ markets, on 5 continents. Three CMO tracks: brand building for the audience of the future, not that of the past.
How do you work?
Written deliverables only. No calls, no meetings, no Zoom. Every engagement starts with a written brief and ends with a document you can actually use. Turnaround: 48-72 hours for audits, 5 days for positioning work.
Where are you based?
Bucharest, Romania. Reachable at adrian@peticila.ro.
what i believe
clarity beats volume.
every time.
twenty years of rooms i shouldn't have been polite in. here's what i actually believe about marketing, strategy, and brand.
email list
Get the Uncliché framework
I break it down further in the email list — one piece at a time, no noise.
