Nazerali was most recently managing director of the marketing consultancy The Depot, which he founded in 1998. Before that, he was senior vice-president of marketing at Viacom's MTV Europe, and he worked on the launch of other Viacom channels, including VH-1 in the UK, VH-1 in Germany and MTV in India.
At the BBC, he will report to Richard Sambrook, director of BBC Global News. Nazerali will lead the market communications teams on BBC World Service, BBC World Television, BBC Monitoring and the international facing online news services.
His job is to build a single brand across the divisions, and develop a marketing strategy that has maximum impact.
Sambrook said: "We created this pan-divisional post to enable us to communicate a unified and compelling Global News message around the world."
The Depot has worked with the BBC World Service and BBC World television, as well as Channel 4. ITV, the FX Channel and Discovery.