Leading article
Judge mobile growth after the joining offer has ended.
The first customer file I worked on contained reasons for joining and almost nothing about what happened afterwards. I was a research assistant at Merrenfield Telecom in Toronto, having completed a commerce degree at Brackenmere College in May 1990. My job was to prepare interview records and reconcile the categories used in a monthly customer report. I did not choose the campaign or control expenditure. What interested me was the gap between a clear answer on a form and the more complicated explanation a customer gave when asked another question. A price could explain the first decision without explaining the relationship.
From June 1990 to May 1997, I worked as an individual contributor in an eleven-person research team. The work was unglamorous and useful. I helped recode 640 historical interview records into a more consistent account, prepared twenty-four monthly research summaries during my final two years and took part in eighteen observed customer interviews. The numbers describe completed work rather than a commercial effect. They also explain why my later interest in evidence began with definitions: a comparison is difficult to trust when two teams have recorded different events under the same heading.
The campaign-manager appointment in June 1997 brought nine employees, two direct reports and, by its end, C$1.4 million annual authority. I learned that a campaign is also a negotiation about scarce attention inside the company. Sales colleagues wanted a clear proposition immediately; finance wanted a defensible cost account; customer service wanted enough time to understand the offer before calls arrived. During the last year, my team coordinated six campaign releases and brought four separate reporting files into one monthly review. I could make the sequence more intelligible, but I could not claim that organising the report had caused the sales recorded within it.
In June 2004 I became head of customer retention. By May 2010 the team comprised twenty-one employees through four direct reports, with C$6 million annual programme authority. The change in remit made the period after joining unavoidable. A customer might respond to an offer and still dislike the experience of remaining. My team reviewed thirty-six cancellation-contact categories, consolidated them to fourteen and examined 1,200 selected records before introducing the revised classification. The selection was operational, not a representative research sample. I became more cautious about explaining an entire customer base through whichever records happened to be easiest to inspect.
I moved to Vancouver and joined Veldoran Mobile in June 2010. It was a younger, founder-owned business selling its own mobile propositions through contracted wholesale connectivity. I led consumer propositions rather than a network. That distinction was important: I could influence the customer account and the offer proposed internally, but I could not independently alter wholesale terms or promise a technical capability outside the contracted service. By December 2016 I led twenty-six employees through five direct reports and held C$11 million annual programme authority. We developed eight proposition briefs and withdrew three after commercial review. The five that continued were better-defined decisions, not proof that the company had discovered five successful markets.
The vice-president appointment in January 2017 joined brand and growth responsibilities. The minority investment in 2018 changed the ownership context and increased scrutiny of the commercial account. I did not negotiate that investment. My task was to make the marketing choices easier to examine as the business grew. By December 2020, forty-one employees reported through five direct reports and the annual authority was C$24 million. We replaced six inconsistent acquisition summaries with a common cohort review, recorded the underlying definitions and began separating line counts from individual customers. That distinction became central to the questions I brought into the CMO role in January 2021.
As CMO, I report to Martin Avelmere and work closely with CFO Elise Norwyn. Our disagreements are usually about the decision supported by a number rather than whether measurement matters. In one channel review, equal opening cohorts had substantially different ninety-day active counts. I proposed changing the next allocation; Elise required a contribution definition that treated commissions, introductory support and the reporting window consistently. Her challenge made the recommendation more useful. The observed groups still did not establish causation, and the allocation remained a judgement under uncertainty rather than a result dictated by arithmetic.
I have also argued for spending that could look inefficient in a narrow account. Retaining a separate prepaid proposition cost money when a combined brand promised communication savings. Preserving an assisted route meant accepting a distribution expense beside a digital channel that was easier to attribute. In each case I had to explain whose choice the simpler model would obscure, what evidence supported the concern and how long the additional expenditure should remain open. I am comfortable with an argument that ends in a bounded experiment instead of a triumphant headline.
My public interests now concern the commercial life after acquisition: the offer that expires, the brand that serves a different commitment preference and the customer whose route to a decision is difficult to fit into attribution software. I have presented executive recommendations to the board since January 2021, without serving as a director. A first non-executive contribution would require learning the wider responsibilities and assessing the particular company. I would bring experience of marketing choices whose consequences continue after the campaign report closes, together with a willingness to explain where that experience stops.