A double header episode as I speak with JP Castlin and James Hankins on the back of their Cannes 2022 talk, in partnership with WARC, "The Gravity of e-commerce".

JP Castlin is an independent consultant who coined the term naturalized strategy-making and created the ABCDE framework. JP has been featured in Marketing Week, The Drum, WARC and more, and he also wrote "Strategy in Polemy". James Hankins is the founder of Vizer Consulting & Global VP Marketing Strategy and Planning at SAGE.

View JP & James' WARC report here.

What we covered in this episode:

• How the pandemic inspired the Cannes collaboration
• The one question everyone was asking at Cannes
• What is driving the sudden adjustment in e-commerce valuations
• Presenting straight after Gary V’s Cannes talk and our obsession with new things
• The threat of Stagflation and how it will impact the economy
• Returning to the 4 P’s for the solution to the problem
• The gravity effect of e-commerce and the challenging cost efficiency
• Defining the model as a shift from one-to-many from many-to-one
• Why marketers are needed to solve this problem
• The real cost of returning e-commerce products
• The long and short effect of guaranteed returns
• How Amazon mitigated the cost of product returns
• Why marketers needs to see the whole picture to solve the puzzle
• The Nike business model and how even they struggle to do e-commerce
• Why growth-first companies like Uber Eats fail to make a profit
• The Vegan Sausage roll principle and the challenge of second-hand car buying platforms
• Why fulfilment capability is so critical for e-commerce businesses
• Why Cinch are set up to beat Cazoo in the car e-commerce war
• The importance of understanding your business model first
• Using creativity to solve the most fundamental commercial challenges
• What we can all learn from the Next annual report and their emergent strategy
• The pivotal role of the CMO in a commercial crisis