About · Alvin Kibalama

I help B2B teams turn digital strategy into shipped pipeline.

Digital Marketing Lead at Nutcracker Agency and University of Glasgow MSc Marketing graduate (Merit). I connect B2B search, paid media economics, privacy-compliant attribution, and revenue operations into practical marketing systems.

Work with Nutcracker → Explore frameworks Read MSc research ↓

The working years and academic foundations

2024–Now

Digital Marketing Lead · Nutcracker Agency

Directing B2B demand generation, paid media economics, search strategy, and revenue attribution across SaaS and enterprise accounts.

2024–2026

MSc Marketing (Merit) · University of Glasgow

Adam Smith Business School. Empirical dissertation: "How can SMEs balance privacy and performance to achieve effective personalised marketing under GDPR?"

2022–24

Senior Digital Mktg Manager · Nutcracker Agency

Led digital strategy across key accounts and created the agency’s pipeline reporting framework.

2019–22

Digital Marketing Manager · Coolabi Group

Managed digital marketing campaigns for global IP brands (Warrior Cats, Beast Quest) spanning television, mobile gaming, and publishing.

2017–19

Growth and partnerships · Snatch / PlayStack

Growth marketing for the UK AR app launch scaling to 1M+ downloads and Series A; brand campaigns for console and mobile titles at PlayStack.

The gap between intention and commercial reality is where I work.

Most marketing strategies look convincing in a deck and fall apart the moment they meet the market. I have spent my career in that gap: diagnosing broken systems, challenging analytics that tell comforting lies, and turning fragmented marketing activity into dependable pipeline.

The construction site and the audit room

I did not enter marketing through a conventional agency route. In 2006, I started out on a construction site interning with Bouygues UK. It was practical, physical work, but it taught me a simple rule: a plan only matters if it holds up when work starts.

Later, at PwC, I worked on consulting projects tied to mergers and acquisitions. That environment taught me to look past the optimism in a presentation and ask a direct question: where does this actually break?

Six years running an independent label

I learned how demand works out of necessity. In 2011, I founded and ran R-Rise Music, an independent record label, for six years. There were no playbooks or safety nets. I had to manage releases, budgets, rights, distribution, and international sales at the same time.

Every decision carried an immediate financial consequence. If a release did not work, it showed up in the bank balance by Friday. That experience tied my understanding of marketing directly to cash flow and commercial results.

Scaling to one million users and Series A

When I moved into consumer apps and tech at Snatch and PlayStack, the scale grew quickly. Working on growth marketing for the UK rollout of Snatch AR, our campaigns generated over one million downloads and strong 30-day retention, helping secure a $15M Series A round. At PlayStack, I worked on marketing campaigns across console and mobile titles. In both roles, vanity numbers did not count. The only question was whether marketing drove real user acquisition and commercial value.

Multi-channel IP and global audience scale

At Coolabi Group, I worked on digital marketing campaigns for international entertainment brands including Warrior Cats, Beast Quest, and The Clangers. These campaigns spanned television, mobile gaming, publishing, and licensed products across several territories. Managing paid media, search, and community channels across those brands showed me how to maintain audience momentum over long, multi-touch journeys.

Practice over theory: Nutcracker Agency

Since joining Nutcracker Agency in 2022, I have moved from Digital Marketing Manager to Senior Manager, and now serve as Digital Marketing Lead. I lead demand generation and commercial performance across our B2B clients in SaaS, professional services, and business services. My focus covers search strategy, paid media economics, conversion rate optimisation, measurement setup, and pipeline attribution.

I do not look at marketing from the sidelines. I build and manage systems with client teams every day.

“Marketing only counts when it moves revenue. If it looks busy but does not produce pipeline, it is just noise.”

— Alvin Kibalama

Academic research and empirical findings

Privacy vs performance: researching GDPR in B2B practice

Adam Smith Business School · University of Glasgow

MSc Marketing (graduated with Merit)

Dissertation: “How can SMEs balance privacy and performance to achieve effective personalised marketing under GDPR?” (12,459 words, empirical interview study).

Download dissertation (PDF) ↓See applied attribution framework →

Alongside agency client work, I completed postgraduate research at the University of Glasgow on how UK B2B SMEs manage the tension between personalised marketing and GDPR privacy rules.

Most academic papers and legal guides treat GDPR purely as a compliance problem, while growth marketing guides treat privacy rules as something to work around. That leaves small teams in a tough spot: how do you run targeted, relevant marketing when third-party cookies are disappearing, platform data is degrading, and compliance mistakes are costly?

Four core empirical findings

Based on in-depth interviews with 11 UK B2B marketing leaders, analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, the study highlighted four practical realities:

Performance as managerial judgement: Marketers do not judge personalisation purely on open rates or clicks. They weigh commercial pipeline gains against buyer annoyance, opt-out rates, and the time required to manage the data properly.
GDPR as an upfront filter: Instead of collecting every possible data point and worrying about compliance later, teams design privacy into their forms and lists from day one. Contact lists shrink, but lead quality and sales confidence go up because data reflects explicit interest.
Attribution uncertainty in B2B buying cycles: Long sales cycles and multi-person buying committees make it hard to prove which personalised email or ad closed a deal. That measurement gap makes expensive privacy software hard to justify, so managers focus on basic data hygiene instead of bloated tools.
Platform-mediated governance routines: Privacy compliance fails when treated as a 40-page legal handbook that nobody opens. It works when built directly into daily tools: consent checkboxes in HubSpot, automatic opt-out syncing, and regular CRM clean-ups.

From research to shipped infrastructure

This research directly informs the marketing infrastructure I build for B2B clients at Nutcracker. Rather than relying on fragile third-party tracking, we build clean first-party setups: server-side Google Tag Manager (sGTM), transparent consent banners, CRM revenue syncing, and practical attribution models that continue working as privacy rules tighten.

The goal is not compliance for its own sake. It is building dependable marketing systems that respect buyer privacy while reliably generating pipeline.

Commercial architecture and advisory