Perspectives
Direct observations on structural commercial failure. Written for senior leaders who sense something is not adding up.
170 posts across 10 series. Each one started as a LinkedIn post. No filler. No frameworks for the sake of frameworks. Just the patterns we keep seeing and the questions that should follow.
Chris Wheeler, Managing Director, letsrocc
The CMO role was designed for a world where marketing was a department
The CMO role was designed for a world where marketing was a department. In a digital business in 2026 it is the connective tissue of everything. Appointing a department head to run connective tissue is why your last two CMOs looked capable in the interview and struggled in the role.
Read#2The average CMO tenure in a digital business is twenty-two months
The average CMO tenure in a digital business is twenty-two months. Your board treats this as a talent pipeline problem. It is an organisational design problem and until you name it as such you will keep solving it with better recruitment.
Read#3Your CMO is managing a function
Your CMO is managing a function. Your commercial system needs someone who can read it. Those are not the same capability and the job description you wrote conflated them.
Read#4You hired a CMO to fix a commercial system problem and they reorganised the team
You hired a CMO to fix a commercial system problem and they reorganised the team. Not because they misunderstood the brief. Because the reorganisation was the thing the role made available to them and the commercial system problem required something the role did not.
Read#5The board wants a CMO who understands data
The board wants a CMO who understands data. The candidate wants a role that gives them authority over the commercial system. The job description promises both. Neither the board nor the candidate is being honest about the structural gap between what the role offers and what the business needs.
Read#6Your CMO cannot tell the product team what to build because they do not have the authority
Your CMO cannot tell the product team what to build because they do not have the authority. They cannot tell the finance team how to measure marketing because they do not have the standing. They cannot tell the CTO what the data infrastructure needs to produce because that is not their territory. And they are accountable for commercial outcomes that sit in all three of those places.
Read#7The intersection of product, sales and marketing is where your revenue is made or lost in a digital business
The intersection of product, sales and marketing is where your revenue is made or lost in a digital business. Your CMO sits at the edge of that intersection, not the centre of it. That positioning is a commercial problem masquerading as an organisational one.
Read#8A SaaS business at forty million ARR has a churn problem
A SaaS business at forty million ARR has a churn problem. The CMO proposes a brand repositioning. The sales director proposes a new SDR structure. The product team proposes a feature expansion. All three are wrong about where the problem sits. None of them is positioned to see where it actually sits.
Read#9Your CMO has been in post for fourteen months
Your CMO has been in post for fourteen months. The commercial system they were hired to improve is producing results that are within the range of the previous CMO's tenure. The team has changed. The agency has changed. The budget has been redistributed. The system is producing the same output.
Read#10The job specification for your next CMO is a document that describes the leader of a function that
The job specification for your next CMO is a document that describes the leader of a function that no longer works the way the job specification assumes. I want to suggest you do not write it until you have answered a more fundamental question.
Read#11Boards are beginning to ask a question about CMO appointments that they were not asking five years ago
Boards are beginning to ask a question about CMO appointments that they were not asking five years ago. Not whether the candidate has the right experience. Whether the role itself is the right structure for the commercial problem the business is trying to solve.
Read#12Your CMO is the most senior marketing person in the business
Your CMO is the most senior marketing person in the business. There is therefore nobody inside the organisation above them in the function who can provide a genuinely independent read of whether the commercial system they are operating is working as well as it should.
Read#13The most expensive hiring decision in a digital business is not the CMO who fails visibly
The most expensive hiring decision in a digital business is not the CMO who fails visibly. It is the CMO who succeeds well enough to stay while the structural problems compound underneath a performance that looks acceptable.
Read#14AI is not making the CMO role more relevant
AI is not making the CMO role more relevant. It is making the absence of genuine systems thinking at the top of the marketing function more expensive faster.
Read#15The digital businesses that are pulling away commercially from their peer group right now are not
The digital businesses that are pulling away commercially from their peer group right now are not the ones with the best CMOs. They are the ones that replaced the CMO model with something that reads the commercial system rather than managing a function inside it.
Read#16Your CMO is presenting to the board using data produced by a measurement system they built or
Your CMO is presenting to the board using data produced by a measurement system they built or inherited and have a professional interest in defending. Your board is making governance decisions on the basis of that presentation. That is a circular information structure and it is producing governance risk that nobody in the room is naming.
Read#17The CMO role was created when the marketing discipline was coherent enough to be led by a single
The CMO role was created when the marketing discipline was coherent enough to be led by a single generalist with broad marketing expertise. The discipline has since fragmented into specialisms that require fundamentally different skill sets and the role has tried to absorb them all without changing its fundamental design.
Read#18The conversation about replacing the CMO is happening in your organisation right now
The conversation about replacing the CMO is happening in your organisation right now, either in the boardroom or in the room adjacent to it. Before it produces another appointment, I want to suggest one question that is not currently on the agenda.
Read#19I want to tell you directly what the Chief Systems Operator model is because the term deserves a
I want to tell you directly what the Chief Systems Operator model is because the term deserves a clear definition rather than a positioning statement.
Read#20The board meeting where someone first asks whether the CMO model is the right structure for the
The board meeting where someone first asks whether the CMO model is the right structure for the commercial problem the business is facing is a different board meeting to any that preceded it. I know because I have been in that room and I know what the conversation that follows produces.
ReadYou were hired to fix something that was broken before you arrived
You were hired to fix something that was broken before you arrived. Nobody said that in the interview. But you knew it by the end of week two.
Read#2The most professionally isolated position in a digital business is not the one with the least authority
The most professionally isolated position in a digital business is not the one with the least authority. It is the one with the most visibility and the fewest degrees of freedom to say what it actually sees.
Read#3The CMO tenure statistics are not a mystery
The CMO tenure statistics are not a mystery. They are arithmetic.
Read#4There is a conversation that happens between a CMO and a CEO that both parties have learned
There is a conversation that happens between a CMO and a CEO that both parties have learned, over time, to navigate without actually having.
Read#5If you came up through brand or communications before digital became the engine of everything
If you came up through brand or communications before digital became the engine of everything, I want to say something to you directly rather than around you.
Read#6Your customer acquisition cost went up again last quarter
Your customer acquisition cost went up again last quarter. The explanation you received was external. Platform costs. Competitor aggression. Creative fatigue. Seasonality.
Read#7The agency you are managing was chosen before you arrived
The agency you are managing was chosen before you arrived. The brief they are working to was written before you arrived. The metrics they are being measured against were agreed before you arrived. And you are accountable for the results they produce.
Read#8A SaaS business at £40m ARR with a churn rate of eight percent is losing the equivalent of its
A SaaS business at £40m ARR with a churn rate of eight percent is losing the equivalent of its entire customer base every twelve and a half years. That sounds acceptable until you calculate what plugging two points of that churn would do to the valuation multiple.
Read#9The reporting framework you are working from was not built for the questions you are trying to answer now
The reporting framework you are working from was not built for the questions you are trying to answer now.
Read#10I want to describe the feeling of watching a well-resourced AI implementation make your commercial
I want to describe the feeling of watching a well-resourced AI implementation make your commercial problems faster without making them smaller, because I think it is more common than anyone is publicly admitting right now.
Read#11Your eCommerce conversion rate is sitting somewhere between one and three percent
Your eCommerce conversion rate is sitting somewhere between one and three percent. The industry benchmark for your category is probably higher and the gap between where you are and where you should be, at your traffic volumes, has a pound sign in front of it that would change the board conversation entirely if anyone had calculated it precisely.
Read#12The first ninety days of a new CMO role follow a pattern so consistent that I have started to think
The first ninety days of a new CMO role follow a pattern so consistent that I have started to think of it less as a leadership approach and more as a gravitational pull.
Read#13There is a specific kind of professional loneliness that a CMO carries that I want to name because
There is a specific kind of professional loneliness that a CMO carries that I want to name because I have never seen it described directly and I think it shapes the role more than anything in the job description.
Read#14Your board does not understand marketing
Your board does not understand marketing. That is not a criticism of your board. It is a structural observation about how commercial governance works at the scale you are operating at.
Read#15You have a strategy
You have a strategy. It is good. It went through enough internal review cycles to have its obvious weaknesses addressed and its strongest arguments properly developed.
Read#16The LTV figure in your SaaS board deck is a projection
The LTV figure in your SaaS board deck is a projection. It is not a designed outcome. I want to name that distinction clearly because the gap between those two things is one of the most expensive gaps in the commercial system you are running.
Read#17There is a version of your eCommerce business that your reporting is not showing you
There is a version of your eCommerce business that your reporting is not showing you. It is the version your customer is actually experiencing.
Read#18I want to say something about political air cover that usually goes unsaid because saying it
I want to say something about political air cover that usually goes unsaid because saying it requires admitting that the need for it exists.
Read#19The measurement framework your team built was optimised for confidence
The measurement framework your team built was optimised for confidence. I want to ask you whether that was the right objective.
Read#20The Marketing MRI exists because a CMO should not have to choose between seeing the commercial
The Marketing MRI exists because a CMO should not have to choose between seeing the commercial system clearly and surviving the politics of naming what they see.
ReadYou can see exactly where the revenue is going
You can see exactly where the revenue is going. You have been able to see it for months. The problem is not the diagnosis. It is that the diagnosis requires a conversation nobody above you is ready to have.
Read#2The conversion rate optimisation programme your business is running is treating the symptom of a
The conversion rate optimisation programme your business is running is treating the symptom of a problem it was not designed to diagnose.
Read#3Your attribution model is the most consequential piece of fiction in your business and everyone who
Your attribution model is the most consequential piece of fiction in your business and everyone who works closely with it knows it and nobody in the budget meeting says so.
Read#4The platform migration was approved on the basis that the platform was the constraint
The platform migration was approved on the basis that the platform was the constraint. You knew before it went live that the platform was not the constraint.
Read#5Your customer acquisition cost is rising and the explanation changes every quarter but the trend does not
Your customer acquisition cost is rising and the explanation changes every quarter but the trend does not.
Read#6The paid media agency is reporting a ROAS that looks strong
The paid media agency is reporting a ROAS that looks strong. The business is not growing at the rate that ROAS should produce. You have been trying to explain the gap between those two things for two quarters and the explanation has not landed in a way that changes the budget conversation.
Read#7There is a moment in the career of every senior ecommerce operator that I want to name because I
There is a moment in the career of every senior ecommerce operator that I want to name because I think it goes undiscussed and it shapes everything that follows.
Read#8Your email programme is generating open rates that look healthy and revenue attribution that looks
Your email programme is generating open rates that look healthy and revenue attribution that looks reasonable and retention numbers that are quietly not responding to either of those things.
Read#9The product your ecommerce business sells is not the thing that determines whether customers return
The product your ecommerce business sells is not the thing that determines whether customers return. The experience of buying it is.
Read#10I want to describe the experience of sitting in a trading meeting where everyone in the room is
I want to describe the experience of sitting in a trading meeting where everyone in the room is looking at the same dashboard and drawing the wrong conclusion from it, because I think it is the most common experience in senior ecommerce and the least discussed.
Read#11Personalisation was supposed to close the gap between what the customer wanted and what your site showed them
Personalisation was supposed to close the gap between what the customer wanted and what your site showed them. You implemented it. The gap is roughly where it was.
Read#12The brief you were given when you took this role was more optimistic than the commercial system you inherited warranted
The brief you were given when you took this role was more optimistic than the commercial system you inherited warranted. You knew that within the first month. The question you have been navigating ever since is how to close the gap between the expectation that was set and the reality you are operating inside.
Read#13Your mobile conversion rate is half your desktop conversion rate and the gap has been there for
Your mobile conversion rate is half your desktop conversion rate and the gap has been there for three years and the explanation given is that mobile is a research channel.
Read#14You inherited an agency relationship with a contract
You inherited an agency relationship with a contract, a set of established reporting rhythms, and a history with your predecessor that shapes every conversation you have with them whether you know it or not.
Read#15The AI tools your business has deployed in the last eighteen months are making the existing problems faster
The AI tools your business has deployed in the last eighteen months are making the existing problems faster. They are not making them smaller.
Read#16There is a number your business is not calculating that is almost certainly the most important
There is a number your business is not calculating that is almost certainly the most important commercial number it generates. It is the revenue value of the customers acquired last year who did not return.
Read#17The search function on your ecommerce site is producing results that would embarrass the product
The search function on your ecommerce site is producing results that would embarrass the product team if they spent thirty minutes using it as a customer.
Read#18Your returns rate is a commercial problem your reporting is treating as a logistics problem
Your returns rate is a commercial problem your reporting is treating as a logistics problem.
Read#19The trading calendar is running your commercial strategy when it should be the other way around
The trading calendar is running your commercial strategy when it should be the other way around.
Read#20The Marketing MRI exists because the diagnosis you have been carrying in your head for the last
The Marketing MRI exists because the diagnosis you have been carrying in your head for the last twelve months deserves to be named properly, by someone with the standing to name it in a room where the decisions get made.
ReadYour checkout is the best salesperson in the building and you have never once trained it
Your checkout is the best salesperson in the building and you have never once trained it.
Read#2Your basket abandonment rate is being treated as a retargeting brief
Your basket abandonment rate is being treated as a retargeting brief. It is not. It is a site diagnostic that someone decided to solve with more spend.
Read#3Your product page is a brochure
Your product page is a brochure. It should be a salesperson.
Read#4Average order value is a comfortable metric
Average order value is a comfortable metric. It sits in your dashboard and trends upward gently and makes the trading review feel productive. It is also one of the most misleading numbers in your ecommerce reporting when margin is not sitting directly next to it.
Read#5Your site search is the most neglected sales floor in your entire ecommerce operation and the
Your site search is the most neglected sales floor in your entire ecommerce operation and the customers using it are the ones with the strongest purchase intent you will see all day.
Read#6The agency that built your attribution model also benefits from the conclusions it produces
The agency that built your attribution model also benefits from the conclusions it produces. I want to name that clearly because it is the most significant conflict of interest in the ecommerce industry and it is almost never described as such.
Read#7Your best customer segment is hiding inside your worst-performing report and nobody has looked for
Your best customer segment is hiding inside your worst-performing report and nobody has looked for it because the aggregate numbers are running at a level that makes the question feel less urgent than it is.
Read#8Your mobile experience is the fitting room nobody maintains
Your mobile experience is the fitting room nobody maintains.
Read#9Your trading calendar is writing your commercial strategy and it should be the other way around
Your trading calendar is writing your commercial strategy and it should be the other way around.
Read#10Your returns rate is your product content team's report card and nobody is reading it as such
Your returns rate is your product content team's report card and nobody is reading it as such.
Read#11You are running a B2B ecommerce operation with a B2C measurement framework and wondering why the
You are running a B2B ecommerce operation with a B2C measurement framework and wondering why the conversion rate does not respond to the interventions you keep making.
Read#12Your personalisation engine is making very sophisticated decisions on very incomplete data and the
Your personalisation engine is making very sophisticated decisions on very incomplete data and the gap between those two things is where your investment in it is going.
Read#13You changed the platform
You changed the platform. The problem came with you.
Read#14Your peak trading performance is a cosmetic treatment for a problem that lives in the baseline and
Your peak trading performance is a cosmetic treatment for a problem that lives in the baseline and you are reviewing the cosmetics quarterly while the problem compounds underneath them.
Read#15Your CRM programme is having a very productive conversation with itself
Your CRM programme is having a very productive conversation with itself.
Read#16Nobody in your last budget meeting asked whether the paid spend was actually causing the revenue or
Nobody in your last budget meeting asked whether the paid spend was actually causing the revenue or just arriving in time to claim it.
Read#17Your marketing team is planning campaigns around stock they do not know is low and your buying team
Your marketing team is planning campaigns around stock they do not know is low and your buying team is sitting on margin-rich inventory that marketing does not know exists.
Read#18The thirty minutes after a customer purchases from you for the first time are the most commercially
The thirty minutes after a customer purchases from you for the first time are the most commercially leveraged thirty minutes in your entire relationship with them. You are almost certainly wasting them.
Read#19The matrix killed your product launch and nobody filed a report about it
The matrix killed your product launch and nobody filed a report about it.
Read#20Examination is not a consultancy exercise
Examination is not a consultancy exercise. It is what you do before you spend any more money on a problem you have not yet correctly identified.
ReadYou are running a financial services business in a market where trust is the only product that
You are running a financial services business in a market where trust is the only product that actually matters at the moment of decision. And somewhere in the last twelve months you have started to feel that your marketing is describing that trust rather than building it. That is not a small distinction.
Read#2Your fintech has acquisition numbers that would satisfy most investor reviews and retention numbers
Your fintech has acquisition numbers that would satisfy most investor reviews and retention numbers that are quietly telling a different story. I know the feeling of carrying both of those things simultaneously and knowing that the gap between them is the real problem and not being certain yet where it actually lives.
Read#3The regulatory environment you operate in is being described by your competitors as the constraint on commercial growth
The regulatory environment you operate in is being described by your competitors as the constraint on commercial growth. I want to offer you a different frame entirely, because I think the constraint framing is costing you more than the regulation itself.
Read#4I want to say something about digital transformation in banking that some of your board members will find uncomfortable
I want to say something about digital transformation in banking that some of your board members will find uncomfortable. Not because it is provocative but because it names something that tends to go unnamed until the cost of not naming it becomes impossible to ignore.
Read#5Your customer acquisition cost in financial services is among the highest of any digital sector
Your customer acquisition cost in financial services is among the highest of any digital sector. The proposal on your desk right now almost certainly suggests making it more efficient. I want to ask you a different question before you approve it.
Read#6There is a kind of pressure that a CEO of a growth-stage fintech carries that I think deserves to
There is a kind of pressure that a CEO of a growth-stage fintech carries that I think deserves to be named directly, because the conversations that surround the role tend to describe it in terms of opportunity rather than the specific weight of what it actually is.
Read#7Your bank has a digital channel
Your bank has a digital channel. I want to say gently but directly that this is not the same as being a digital business. The gap between those two things is where your commercial performance is being lost and the distance between them is larger than most digital investment reviews are structured to reveal.
Read#8Customer lifetime value is the number that leads your investor deck and the number your commercial
Customer lifetime value is the number that leads your investor deck and the number your commercial system is least well-designed to actually produce. I want to say that clearly because the gap between LTV as a projection and LTV as a designed outcome is one of the most consistently expensive gaps I see in fintech businesses at growth stage.
Read#9The pattern I see in fintech businesses that are struggling commercially is not lazy leadership or
The pattern I see in fintech businesses that are struggling commercially is not lazy leadership or poor execution or lack of ambition. It is nearly always the opposite. It is an organisation of driven, talented people working inside a commercial architecture that was designed around one objective, growth, and was never revised to include the objective that makes growth sustainable.
Read#10I want to describe a moment that I recognise in fintech CEO conversations before the person I am
I want to describe a moment that I recognise in fintech CEO conversations before the person I am talking with has finished describing it, because I have heard it often enough to know its shape.
Read#11Fraud prevention in your financial services business is doing its job and quietly costing you
Fraud prevention in your financial services business is doing its job and quietly costing you commercial performance that nobody is measuring because the measurement framework was never built to capture it.
Read#12The commercial vocabulary of banking and financial services was borrowed from consumer ecommerce
The commercial vocabulary of banking and financial services was borrowed from consumer ecommerce and it fits with enough imprecision to create strategic confusion at the leadership level that nobody is naming as confusion because it is the vocabulary everyone is using.
Read#13Your digital bank is investing in brand
Your digital bank is investing in brand. I think that is the right investment in a market where trust is the commercial product. I also want to say something about the sequencing of it that the people selling you brand investment are not positioned to say.
Read#14Nobody who works for you can tell you what I am about to say without calculating the professional
Nobody who works for you can tell you what I am about to say without calculating the professional cost of saying it first. I want you to sit with that before I say it, because the fact of it is as important as the content.
Read#15The fintech businesses that will achieve their highest possible valuation in the next three years
The fintech businesses that will achieve their highest possible valuation in the next three years are not necessarily the ones growing fastest right now. They are the ones whose commercial architecture is demonstrably sound in the ways that a due diligence process is specifically designed to test.
Read#16I ask every CEO of a bank or fintech I meet early in our conversation a question that is not about their numbers
I ask every CEO of a bank or fintech I meet early in our conversation a question that is not about their numbers. It is about their dependency.
Read#17The compliance function in your financial services business is doing its job
The compliance function in your financial services business is doing its job. The question I want to ask is whether the commercial function has been given enough room to do its job around it, and whether the answer to that has become so accepted internally that nobody thinks to question it anymore.
Read#18Partnership distribution in banking and fintech is the channel that carries the highest
Partnership distribution in banking and fintech is the channel that carries the highest expectations and the weakest commercial measurement discipline of any in the business, and I think that combination explains more underperforming partnership agreements than any other single factor.
Read#19Your bank or fintech is operating in a market where every serious competitor has access to the same
Your bank or fintech is operating in a market where every serious competitor has access to the same product capabilities, the same regulatory constraints, and the same digital channels. The commercial difference between the ones that compound and the ones that plateau is not the product. It is the system that delivers the product and keeps the customer inside it.
Read#20I started letsrocc with Claudia Misselwitz because we both arrived
I started letsrocc with Claudia Misselwitz because we both arrived, from different directions, at the same conclusion about what financial services and ecommerce businesses at serious scale actually need when their commercial performance stops matching their investment.
ReadThe cost of customer acquisition in financial services is the highest of any digital sector and the
The cost of customer acquisition in financial services is the highest of any digital sector and the return on that acquisition is the least independently verified. As a CFO, that combination should feel uncomfortable. I want to describe why it should, precisely, rather than generally.
Read#2The commercial technology layer in a financial services business at £20m to £250m revenue is the
The commercial technology layer in a financial services business at £20m to £250m revenue is the cost base I find most consistently under-examined relative to what it is actually producing.
Read#3There is a specific financial risk that sits in the gap between what a fintech's commercial metrics
There is a specific financial risk that sits in the gap between what a fintech's commercial metrics show and what the underlying economics of the business actually are, and it has a shape I want to describe because the CFOs who can see it clearly are the ones who are governing most completely.
Read#4Churn in a fintech business is a financial metric being treated as a product metric and that
Churn in a fintech business is a financial metric being treated as a product metric and that category error has significant governance consequences.
Read#5I want to sit with you for a moment in the board presentation about commercial performance in your bank or fintech
I want to sit with you for a moment in the board presentation about commercial performance in your bank or fintech. Not the one that went badly. The normal one. The one that looked fine.
Read#6The partnership distribution agreements in your financial services business are carrying projected
The partnership distribution agreements in your financial services business are carrying projected commercial value that I would be willing to wager has never been independently verified against actual commercial performance. I say that not as a provocation but as an observation that has held in every financial services business I have looked at closely.
Read#7I want to make the financial argument for commercial system assessment clearly and without the
I want to make the financial argument for commercial system assessment clearly and without the marketing language that tends to attach itself to it, because the argument is straightforward and stands on its own.
Read#8The FCA's Consumer Duty regime is being managed in your organisation as a compliance requirement
The FCA's Consumer Duty regime is being managed in your organisation as a compliance requirement. I want to suggest it is also a financial risk management question and that managing it as the former without accounting for it as the latter is leaving a significant exposure uncovered.
Read#9There is a version of your bank's P&L that your current reporting cannot show you
There is a version of your bank's P&L that your current reporting cannot show you. I want to describe it because once you can see its shape, the case for examining it becomes self-evident.
Read#10The CFO of a fintech at growth stage is in a structurally unusual relationship with the commercial
The CFO of a fintech at growth stage is in a structurally unusual relationship with the commercial metrics they are responsible for governing. I want to name that structural position clearly because it shapes the governance challenge in a way that is rarely acknowledged.
Read#11Your marketing budget goes through more governance discipline in a single approval cycle than the
Your marketing budget goes through more governance discipline in a single approval cycle than the measurement process used to evaluate what that budget returned receives in a full year. I want to name that asymmetry directly because it is a control weakness that exists in almost every financial services business I have examined and is almost never described as such.
Read#12Regulatory capital in banking goes through more governance scrutiny in a single quarter than the
Regulatory capital in banking goes through more governance scrutiny in a single quarter than the commercial system generating the revenue that capital is meant to support receives in three years. I am not suggesting capital governance is excessive. I am observing that the asymmetry creates a specific and underexamined operational vulnerability.
Read#13The fintech that cannot clearly explain the unit economics of a customer cohort acquired eighteen
The fintech that cannot clearly explain the unit economics of a customer cohort acquired eighteen months ago is building its next budget request on a foundation that the CFO cannot fully verify. I want to describe that conversation because I have watched it create real damage in board relationships and it is entirely avoidable.
Read#14I want to name the thing that makes commercial assessment in financial services harder than in any
I want to name the thing that makes commercial assessment in financial services harder than in any other sector I work in, because it shapes how the work has to be approached and what it takes to do it honestly.
Read#15There is a number that does not appear in any standard bank or fintech reporting that I would argue
There is a number that does not appear in any standard bank or fintech reporting that I would argue is the most commercially significant number the business generates. I want to describe how to calculate it because once you can see it, it is very difficult to look away from.
Read#16The commercial metrics presented to your board were built to communicate confidence
The commercial metrics presented to your board were built to communicate confidence. I want to ask you whether that is the right objective for a reporting system that you are also trying to govern from.
Read#17Consumer Duty is being treated in financial services as a compliance question
Consumer Duty is being treated in financial services as a compliance question. I want to say plainly that it is also a financial risk question and that the CFO who is not accounting for it as such is leaving an exposure uncovered that is growing as the regime embeds.
Read#18The acquisition efficiency gains your performance marketing team is reporting are real
The acquisition efficiency gains your performance marketing team is reporting are real. I am not questioning the numbers. I am questioning whether efficiency is the right objective for a commercial system in financial services that needs to be building financial relationships rather than processing account openings.
Read#19The financial services businesses I have found with the weakest commercial measurement discipline
The financial services businesses I have found with the weakest commercial measurement discipline are not the ones with the smallest data functions. They are, with a frequency that has stopped surprising me, the ones with the largest.
Read#20I want to be direct about why a fixed-fee
I want to be direct about why a fixed-fee, time-bounded commercial assessment is the right instrument for a financial services CFO who suspects their commercial system is compromised but cannot get a clean read from inside the organisation. Because I know what that position feels like from the inside and I know why the usual options do not satisfy it.
ReadThe business case for the next agency relationship is being built on the reporting produced by the last one
The business case for the next agency relationship is being built on the reporting produced by the last one.
Read#2Your ecommerce conversion rate is a fraction
Your ecommerce conversion rate is a fraction. The numerator is visible. The denominator is not.
Read#3There is a specific moment in the commercial lifecycle of an ecommerce business where more activity
There is a specific moment in the commercial lifecycle of an ecommerce business where more activity stops producing more results and starts producing more noise. Recognising that moment before it becomes expensive is the thing that separates well-run commercial systems from busy ones.
Read#4We were asked recently what the difference is between a Marketing MRI and a good internal marketing review
We were asked recently what the difference is between a Marketing MRI and a good internal marketing review.
Read#5The most dangerous dashboard in an ecommerce business is the one everyone trusts
The most dangerous dashboard in an ecommerce business is the one everyone trusts.
Read#6The handoff between your marketing function and your product function is costing your ecommerce
The handoff between your marketing function and your product function is costing your ecommerce business more than any underperforming channel.
Read#7We charge a fixed fee for the Marketing MRI. Not a day rate
We charge a fixed fee for the Marketing MRI. Not a day rate. Not a retainer from the start. Not a scope that expands with the complexity of what we find.
Read#8Incrementality is the measurement concept that changes every ecommerce marketing conversation it enters
Incrementality is the measurement concept that changes every ecommerce marketing conversation it enters. It is also the one least applied at the level of commercial decision-making in businesses that need it most.
Read#9The question we are asked most often by CEOs considering a Marketing MRI is what happens if you
The question we are asked most often by CEOs considering a Marketing MRI is what happens if you find something we cannot fix internally.
Read#10If you are reading this and something in it is describing a situation you recognise
If you are reading this and something in it is describing a situation you recognise, that recognition is the data point worth attending to.
ReadI have spent thirty years watching businesses spend money on marketing and then spend more money
I have spent thirty years watching businesses spend money on marketing and then spend more money trying to understand why it did not produce what it should have. I built something to stop that cycle.
Read#2The question I get asked about the Marketing MRI more than any other is who it is for
The question I get asked about the Marketing MRI more than any other is who it is for. Let me answer that precisely rather than broadly.
Read#3I want to be precise about what the Marketing MRI is not, because precision matters here more than promotion
I want to be precise about what the Marketing MRI is not, because precision matters here more than promotion.
Read#4There is a conversation that happens in almost every ecommerce business at serious scale that I
There is a conversation that happens in almost every ecommerce business at serious scale that I recognise before the person I am speaking with has finished describing it.
Read#5The fixed fee for a Marketing MRI is £22,500
The fixed fee for a Marketing MRI is £22,500. I want to address that directly because the CFOs and CEOs I speak with are right to think carefully about it.
Read#6Every business that comes to us for a Marketing MRI has tried something before it
Every business that comes to us for a Marketing MRI has tried something before it. Usually several things.
Read#7I want to describe what the output of a Marketing MRI actually looks like
I want to describe what the output of a Marketing MRI actually looks like, because the word report has accumulated enough bad associations in this industry to make the description necessary.
Read#8The thing I find consistently in businesses that have been running a structural commercial problem
The thing I find consistently in businesses that have been running a structural commercial problem for more than twelve months is not a lack of intelligence at leadership level. It is a lack of distance.
Read#9I have been asked why the Marketing MRI takes six weeks rather than two
I have been asked why the Marketing MRI takes six weeks rather than two. The question deserves a direct answer.
Read#10I started letsrocc with Claudia Misselwitz because we both arrived at the same conclusion from different directions
I started letsrocc with Claudia Misselwitz because we both arrived at the same conclusion from different directions.
ReadYour next board presentation could be your last and you already know why.
Digital investment up forty percent year on year. Revenue trajectory flat. Nobody can explain the gap in a way that leads to solutions. Marketing blames product roadmap. Product blames sales execution. Sales blames lead quality. You are paying three departments to blame each other whilst competitors execute at twice your velocity.
Read#2You have replaced your head of digital marketing three times in two years. The fourth will fail for the same reason the first three did.
Every new hire diagnoses same issues within weeks. Marketing and sales rewarding contradictory behaviour. Customer experience fragmented across departments. Website changes requiring four way sign off. Product shipping features marketing cannot position.
Read#3Digital investment increased forty percent. Revenue from digital declined twelve percent. Your CFO wants answers you do not have.
More traffic. More tools. More team. Less revenue. The reports show channel performance improving. Finance sees those channels losing money. Something between measurement and reality is broken and you are making expensive decisions based on data that does not reflect truth.
Read#4You acquired the business six months ago. Digital was meant to be the growth engine. It is burning cash without producing growth.
The vendor deck showed impressive traffic growth, expanding team, modern technology stack. Due diligence found no obvious problems. Three months post acquisition you realise traffic grows whilst revenue stays flat, team is large but ineffective, technology stack is expensive but underutilised.
Read#5Marketing is complex. You do not have visibility into whether fifteen million pounds is being optimised or just spent.
Team reports metrics improving. Traffic up. Engagement up. Cost per acquisition down. But when you ask which channels actually drive profitable revenue growth, the answer requires three weeks to assemble from conflicting data sources.
Read#6Your competitors fixed this three years ago. They are executing at twice your velocity whilst you are still discussing the same transformation roadmap.
Three separate board presentations on digital transformation. Same priorities. Same timeline. Same stakeholders blocking progress. Eighteen months elapsed. Nothing material changed. Meanwhile competitors who started later are already delivering outcomes you are still planning.
Read#7Board meeting in three weeks. Marketing spend up forty percent. Performance flat. You need answers now.
Marketing explains performance with metrics you do not understand. Finance sees those same metrics translating to results that do not match investment. You are caught between two departments speaking different languages about same operation and neither can explain gap in way that leads to solutions.
Read#8Nobody will tell you the truth about why digital underperforms because telling the truth ends careers.
Your head of digital knows sales compensation structure creates behaviour marketing spends money compensating for. Cannot say it without making enemy of sales director. Your product lead knows roadmap solves problems customers do not have. Cannot say it without questioning strategy CEO approved. Your ops director knows checkout process is broken. Cannot say it without admitting operations prevented fixing it for eighteen months.
Read#9You are eighteen months from exit. Digital is meant to drive valuation. Currently it is destroying it.
Buyer due diligence will expose everything vendor deck glossed over. Traffic that does not convert. Technology stack that is expensive liability not valuable asset. Team that is large but ineffective. Attribution model that is pure fiction. When the buyer's technical team audits your digital operation, every weakness becomes valuation haircut.
Read#10Your most expensive problem is not what is broken. It is that nobody has authority to fix it.
Marketing sees the checkout conversion problem. Cannot fix it because operations owns checkout. Operations sees the product data quality problem. Cannot fix it because merchandising owns taxonomy. Merchandising sees the campaign relevance problem. Cannot fix it because marketing owns targeting.
Read#11The gap between what your business is doing and what your reporting says it is doing is where your biggest commercial risk sits.
Every dashboard you present tells a version of reality that makes the room more comfortable. Impressions up. CTR improving. CPL down. CAC stable.
Read#12Your dashboards show channel performance improving. Finance sees those channels losing money. Nobody trusts your numbers anymore.
Attribution model gives paid search credit for conversions organic content created. You report paid search ROI. Finance calculates full customer acquisition cost including overhead and sees losses. Board questions whether marketing understands unit economics. Your credibility erodes whilst you defend metrics you know are problematic but cannot change without admitting measurement has been wrong.
Read#13Your team is large. Your velocity is slow. Board questions whether team can execute strategy you committed to delivering.
Eighteen people across paid, organic, content, social, email, analytics, operations. Expensive team. Modest outcomes. Board compares your team size to revenue contribution and questions whether structure is right.
Read#14Sales blames lead quality. Product blames positioning. Operations blames campaign timing. You are refereeing departments whilst competitors execute.
Every campaign launch requires alignment between marketing, sales, product, operations, finance, legal. Each department has veto rights. Each optimises their constraints over campaign success. Marketing wants to move fast. Legal wants to review everything. Operations wants advance notice. Sales wants different targeting. Product wants different messaging.
Read#15You are the only marketing person in room full of operators who do not understand what marketing actually does.
CEO ran operations. CFO understands finance. COO knows supply chain. CTO speaks engineering. You speak marketing. When you explain why brand investment matters or why attribution is complex, you see eyes glaze over. They hear excuses not explanations.
Read#16Your budget is first to cut when revenue misses forecast. Every quarter you defend investment board sees as discretionary.
Revenue shortfall happens. CFO presents options. Marketing budget appears as easy savings because board sees it as variable cost not revenue driver. You defend spend with metrics they do not trust. Budget gets cut. Performance declines. Next quarter you explain performance gap created by cuts they demanded. Cycle repeats.
Read#17You have twelve channels running. Nobody can tell you which three actually drive profitable revenue growth.
Paid search, paid social, display, organic, email, affiliate, partnerships, influencer, events, content, PR, direct. Each channel has specialist optimising performance. Each reports metrics improving. When you ask which channels drive profitable customer acquisition, answer requires three weeks to assemble from conflicting attribution sources.
Read#18You spend three weeks each quarter assembling reports explaining performance to board. Those three weeks could be spent fixing what the reports reveal is broken.
Last week of quarter is panic closing gaps. First week of new quarter is analysing what happened. Second week is assembling board presentation. Third week is defending performance in board meeting. Fourth week is executing plans approved in board meeting. By week eight you are analysing what happened again.
Read#19The question your successor will ask in their first month is the one you should be asking now.
Every CMO inheriting a digital operation asks same question in first thirty days. Why is attribution model broken and why has nobody fixed it. Why is technology stack expensive but underutilised. Why is team large but velocity slow. Why do channel reports show improvement whilst revenue is flat.
Read#20Channel performance improves. Revenue from channels declines. You are optimising metrics that do not predict outcomes you are accountable for delivering.
Click through rates up twelve percent. Cost per click down eight percent. Conversion rate improving. Revenue per session declining. You optimised what measurement showed mattered. Measurement was wrong.
ReadThe CMO job spec has not changed in fifteen years
The CMO job spec has not changed in fifteen years. The commercial environment it is supposed to serve is unrecognisable from what it was fifteen years ago. Nobody in the room seems to think that is a problem worth naming.
Read#2Here is the thing about a ten person marketing team that nobody who runs one will say out loud in a group like this
Here is the thing about a ten person marketing team that nobody who runs one will say out loud in a group like this.
Read#3MMM. DDA. Personalisation at scale
MMM. DDA. Personalisation at scale. Dynamic pricing logic. Incrementality testing. These are systems tools. They require systems thinking to use properly.
Read#4I want to say something that most Digital Directors in a scaling business already know and are not
I want to say something that most Digital Directors in a scaling business already know and are not in a position to say clearly.
Read#5The first thing a new CMO does in almost every business I have seen is audit the existing structure
The first thing a new CMO does in almost every business I have seen is audit the existing structure and propose a reorganisation.
Read#6The title CMO implies that marketing is a function that needs a chief
The title CMO implies that marketing is a function that needs a chief. A chief who owns it, leads it, represents it at board level, and is accountable for its performance as a discrete organisational unit.
Read#7I was sent a job specification recently for a VP of Marketing role paying €168,000
I was sent a job specification recently for a VP of Marketing role paying €168,000. The candidate profile required experience with MMM, DDA, personalisation and long-term vision and strategy. It also required them to have graduated top of their class.
Read#8There is a role that exists in practice inside every digital business that is performing
There is a role that exists in practice inside every digital business that is performing commercially at the level its investment should produce. It does not have a name yet in most organisations. It is not the CMO. It is not the CTO. It is not the CDO.
Read#9The reason the marketing function in a scaling digital business becomes politically difficult is not personality
The reason the marketing function in a scaling digital business becomes politically difficult is not personality. It is architecture.
Read#10Thirty years in this industry and the question I get asked more than any other right now is some
Thirty years in this industry and the question I get asked more than any other right now is some version of what does a modern marketing leadership role actually look like.
ReadThe examination that changes the conversation
The Marketing MRI is a six-week, senior-led read of the commercial system sitting between your marketing investment and your revenue line.