Paid for the forecast

The stock that sold in November was bought in June.

In a direct-to-consumer business that sentence is most of the year. Somebody put a number on a sheet in the early summer, the number went to a factory, and the factory sent back boxes. By the time the campaign was being argued about in October, the goods were already on the water.

Whose number was it? Everywhere I have seen it done, it came from marketing. Finance shaped it and operations sized it, but the demand line, how many people will want this and when, sat with the marketing team.

That changes what the job is.

I used to think a head of marketing was hired for the campaign. The creative, the channel mix, the launch. That is the visible part, and it is what the interview is about. But a business does not lose real money on a weak campaign. It loses real money on a forecast: the warehouse full of a colour nobody wanted, or the empty shelf in the fortnight when everybody wanted it.

Both are marketing's number wearing another department's name.

So the real job is being right about November in May. Get that right and the campaign is what production looks like when the forecast held. Get it wrong and no campaign can repair it, because you cannot advertise your way out of a stock position. You can only discount your way into a smaller one.

The uncomfortable part is how little of my training prepared me for this. I was taught to make demand. Nobody taught me to say how much of it there would be, with a date on it, and to sign my name underneath.

That signature is the job. The title is a forecasting role in a creative costume, and the people who hired for it knew that before I did.