From billboards to AI-powered content

Before Gradezilla

For nine years, Mariam Dayekh sold the kind of advertising you see from the highway. As an account manager at one of Lebanon’s best-known outdoor advertising companies, she ran billboard campaigns for major accounts across almost every industry in the country — handling the clients, the sites and the negotiations, and learning offline marketing from the inside out.

Why digital marketing

She wasn’t trying to escape her career. She was trying to complete it. Mariam had mastered one half of marketing and could see the other half becoming the bigger one: social platforms and AI were where her clients’ attention and budgets were heading. She wanted to be as strong online as she already was offline, with a longer-term plan to build something of her own. Before enrolling she compared several academies in Lebanon side by side. Gradezilla won, and she says she has never second-guessed the decision.

The honest fear

Her fear was specific. Not that the course would be too hard, but that she would finish it, collect the certificate, and still freeze the first time a real client asked her to run a real campaign. She had no hands-on digital experience at all. What dissolved it was repetition: day by day the work stopped feeling theoretical, and by the end she knew she could apply it professionally.

The moment it clicked

Ads Manager. Building a complete campaign from the first objective through to the reporting made the whole picture snap together. The other surprise was AI — generating AI characters to produce advertising content was something she had never touched before, and it turned into one of the most valuable skills she uses today.

Where she is today

On 7 July 2026, ten weeks after her final certificate, Mariam launched Leora — her own social media and AI agency. She produces client content in Canva, creates AI-generated video, and brings nine years of client-handling instinct that most new agency owners are still years away from having.

Her first client, without a photoshoot

One of her first clients, Narjes Boutique, owns two clothing stores in Beirut. Instead of booking a photoshoot with models, a location and a crew, Mariam produced AI-generated fashion videos that showed the pieces realistically — at a fraction of the cost and turnaround. The client was thrilled, saw customer interest rise, and started tagging and collaborating with Leora publicly. That one project brought Mariam visibility, a steady stream of Instagram enquiries, and new requests for both social media management and AI production.

“Apply now. I compared a lot of courses before I chose this one, and it is built on practice rather than theory — that is the difference you feel the day a real client hands you a real brief.”

Her certificates

Mariam completed the Digital Marketing Intensive Course (60 hours) and the CPD-accredited Canva Design Mastery course with Gradezilla.

Follow her work → @leora_media