With over 15 years of experience across six countries, Cemre Akkaya has built her career at the intersection of global scale and local nuance. As VP of Marketing at Desertcart, she has led the brand’s expansion across 164 countries — not by applying global playbooks, but by questioning them.
Cemre believes that while data may scale, trust does not. In an era increasingly shaped by automation and AI, she advocates for using technology to handle complexity, so marketers can focus on psychology, clarity, and human intent. From redesigning cross-border trust systems to challenging traditional campaign structures, she shares how brands can grow globally without losing cultural depth.
Your career has taken you across six countries and diverse cultures. In the 2026 landscape—where e-commerce is more globalized and culturally nuanced than ever—how has this “nomadic” professional journey shaped the way you lead brands across multiple markets and borders?
Working across six countries taught me that there is no such thing as a truly “global” consumer. We see global behaviors, certainly, but they are always filtered through the thick lens of culture, trust, and lived experience. We all have different shared pasts- different jokes that make us laugh and traumas that trigger us. That understanding is at the pulse of how I lead brands today.
Rather than starting with country-level assumptions, I prefer to start with human truths; fear of regret, desire for control, need for reassurance. Only then do I study how those truths manifest in each market. For example, a shopper in the UAE and a shopper in Germany may share the exact same anxiety about delivery risk—but the way they seek reassurance is completely different. If we send the same email to both, the execution fails immediately.
My journey also made me comfortable with ambiguity. Leading across borders means accepting that not everything can be standardized. The role of leadership is to design systems that are emotionally consistent but operationally flexible. The brand must feel familiar everywhere, while still respecting local context.
“I don’t believe in exporting playbooks from one market to another. I believe in translating intent, not tactics.”
That mindset only comes from having lived inside multiple cultures rather than observing them from a distance.
As AI increasingly dominates Adtech in 2026, marketing risks becoming efficient but impersonal. How do you balance advanced automation with the human and psychological insights at the core of your approach, ensuring data enhances genuine connection rather than reducing marketing to performance metrics alone?
I’m optimistic when it comes to AI in marketing, but only when it’s used with context and human supervision. Right now, I see too many brands increasing their output only to end up with generic, repetitive content. This happens because not enough context is applied before generating content. Then, it happens again when teams take what an AI tool produces and simply copy-paste it without screening, shaping, or challenging it.
“AI is there to increase speed and scale, not to replace thinking.”
Data and automation help us test faster, personalize more intelligently, and identify patterns humans might miss. But meaning, intent, and emotional nuance still come from people. Without that layer, marketing becomes a machine-to-machine interaction that is entirely forgettable.
I’m very deliberate about where human judgment sits in the process. We use psychology to frame the question before AI is involved, then, we use human review to ensure the output actually sounds like it understands a person.
When AI is guided properly, it strengthens connections. When it is left unchecked, it flattens brands into mere metrics. The balance comes from remembering who is supposed to be served at the end of the system: a human, not a dashboard.
Trust has become one of the most valuable currencies in cross-border commerce. Drawing on your expertise in branding and consumer psychology, how do you think brands can deliberately design credibility, emotional reassurance, and confidence into the customer experience—especially in markets where distance and delivery risk are inherent?
In cross-border commerce, trust isn’t a marketing problem — as much as we’d like to believe it is. It is a system design problem.
“Consumers don’t just look at a brand’s messaging and decide to trust it; they trust a brand when that messaging actually meets the reality of their experience.”
Hence, a system has to be designed across marketing, supply chain, technology, and customer service so the experience feels consistent at every touchpoint. The biggest anxiety consumers face is not price but uncertainty. Will the product arrive? When? Will there be hidden costs? Who is responsible if something goes wrong? Campaigns do not answer these questions. They are answered by how well the system is designed to behave predictably.
When marketing promises reassurance, the supply chain must deliver clarity. When technology sets expectations, customer service must reinforce them using the same language and logic. Trust is built when every department takes shared ownership of the customer outcome.
From a psychological standpoint, reassurance comes from feeling guided rather than sold to. The brands that perform well do not pretend that the process is perfect. They show competence in handling imperfections and communicate consistently when things change.
Trust is earned when systems reduce uncertainty, align teams, and remove contradictions. When that happens, confidence follows naturally, even across borders.
Looking two years ahead, what do you see as the next major shift in e-commerce branding? Do you believe we will move beyond social commerce into a fundamentally different model, and how should brand voices evolve now to stay relevant in that future?
As every industry matures, e-commerce is maturing as well. And with maturity, categories inevitably become commoditised. When that happens, there are only two real ways to win: you either win commoditization, the way Amazon does, through scale, price, and operational dominance, or you win through specialization.
Most brands will not win the first game. That path requires infrastructure, logistics, and capital that very few players possess.
“The real opportunity over the next two years is in specialization. Brands that stand for something clear, serve a specific need deeply, and reduce decision fatigue will outperform those trying to appeal to everyone.”
This is where we move beyond social commerce. Discovery will always exist, but the next phase is about decision confidence. Consumers are overwhelmed. They are not looking for more options; they definitely have plenty of those. They are looking for clarity. Brand voices must evolve accordingly: less entertainment, more conviction, less trend-chasing, more point of view. Brands that help consumers decide faster and with less regret will earn trust and loyalty in a commoditized market.
The future belongs to brands that know exactly who they are for and are comfortable saying “no” to everyone else.
You’ve often challenged the idea of “this is how we’ve always done it.” Can you share a specific example from 2025 or 2026 where you deliberately moved away from a traditional marketing playbook and experimented with a new approach that meaningfully changed outcomes?
For a long time, our default approach was to develop a strong campaign idea and then translate it across our core markets, mainly Saudi Arabia, India, and the UAE. It looked streamlined and cost-effective on paper. In reality, it was built on a flawed assumption that consumers in these diverse regions think and decide in similar ways, which simply is not true.
Campaign video: link – https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPgoZYeE3p5/
In 2025, we deliberately challenged that model. We brought in an external team to train us on how different markets actually think, decide, and build trust. One of the strongest insights came from India. There is a deeply rooted cultural behavior where people are expected to bring gifts for relatives and friends when they travel abroad. It is almost a social obligation.
Instead of adapting an existing global campaign, we built one from scratch around this insight. We positioned Desertcart as a modern replacement for that behavior, using humour-driven content to show how you no longer need to wait for someone to travel to get international products.
The campaign resonated immediately. It became the highest-reaching consumer campaign in Desertcart’s history. More importantly, it changed our mindset. We stopped translating ideas and started building them from cultural truths.
As a female leader in a high-growth e-commerce and technology environment, what has curiosity taught you about leadership, and what advice would you offer to young women in the UAE and KSA who aspire to lead the marketing teams of the future?
Curiosity has taught me that leadership is not about having all the answers. It is about consistently asking better questions. It is the willingness to go deeper than what is expected of you. In fast-growth environments, the people who progress fastest are often the ones who take more responsibility than their role requires.
I strongly believe in always doing more than you think you can. Growth comes from stretching yourself, not waiting until you feel fully ready. Curiosity helps you connect dots across functions and understand the broader system you are operating in.
For young women in the UAE and KSA, my advice is to focus on fundamentals: learn how the business actually makes money. Understand how decisions are made, who influences them, and why trade-offs exist. Marketing becomes far more powerful when it is grounded in commercial and operational reality.
Build depth, not just visibility. Ask to be involved in problems outside you immediate role. Stay curious longer than others are comfortable. And remember – leadership is earned through ownership, consistency, and credibility over time.
“Your perspective is not something to soften or dilute; it is something to develop and stand behind with confidence.”
Read more: Nicolas Geahchan: Keeping the Heart in Advertising
