Still Loading | The eCommerce & Marketing Podcast

Is TikTok Shop becoming Amazon's biggest competitor? And are brands measuring ecommerce growth all wrong?

In this episode of Still Loading, Abdu sits down with Carina McLeod, Founder of eCommerce Nurse, to explore how Amazon, TikTok Shop and AI are reshaping the future of ecommerce.

Carina joined Amazon back in 2004, when selling anything beyond books online was still a relatively new concept. Having helped launch new categories at Amazon and spent over 20 years in ecommerce, she's now seeing familiar patterns emerge with the rapid growth of TikTok Shop.

As Carina puts it: “TikTok is creating demand. Amazon's capturing that.”

Together, they explore:

• Amazon vs TikTok Shop: Why discovery-led commerce is challenging traditional search-led shopping.
• The ROAS obsession: Why brands focusing on advertising returns could be missing the bigger commercial opportunity.
• Connected commerce: How TikTok Shop, Amazon, DTC and retail influence each other, and why measuring channels in isolation can be misleading.
• The creator economy: Why authenticity and trust can outperform polished brand content.
• AI and ecommerce: How automation is changing Amazon advertising and making strategic thinking more important.
• Building brands on Amazon: Why optimising individual product listings isn't enough to drive sustainable growth.
• The future of ecommerce agencies: How agencies must evolve to remain valuable as technology advances.

From Amazon's early expansion to TikTok Shop's explosive growth, this conversation challenges how brands think about customer acquisition, attribution, profitability and the role of marketplaces in modern commerce.

Whether you're a founder, ecommerce director, marketer or marketplace specialist, this episode offers a fresh perspective on where ecommerce is heading — and what brands need to rethink today.

🎙️ Still Loading — Honest conversations with the people behind marketing, ecommerce and retail. No polished case studies. Just the real stories, decisions and lessons behind the results.

Follow Still Loading on Spotify for more conversations with the people shaping the future of commerce.

#ecommerce #marketing #retail #tiktok #tiktokshop #amazon #amazonads #advertising #automation #data

What if hiring more people isn’t the answer to growing your marketing team?

In this episode of Still Loading, Abdu sits down with Ginny Nicholls, founder of Interim Digital, to explore how freelancing, flexible talent and AI are changing the way brands and agencies build teams.

After a decade in agency life, Ginny went freelance — initially charging just £35 an hour — before building a curated network of specialist freelancers used by brands and agencies when they need additional expertise, capacity and speed. Pasted text

They get into:

• Why full-time hiring isn’t always the safest option
• The rise of hybrid teams combining employees and specialist freelancers
• Why businesses need to get better at working with freelancers, not simply hiring them
• How AI can remove the grunt work without replacing experienced human judgement
• Why speed of decision-making can matter more than having perfect data
• Pricing, selling yourself and building momentum as a freelancer
• The personal side of running a business — including burnout, resilience and knowing when to stop
• Whether traditional full-time marketing teams could eventually become outdated

Ginny also shares one of the biggest lessons she’s learned building her own business: “You don’t have to employ people to empower them.” Pasted text

And when asked what’s still loading for her? Mastering lead generation — because, as Ginny puts it, “sales cures all.” Pasted text

🎙️ Still Loading is the podcast where people in marketing, eCommerce and retail tell the truth about what it actually takes — the decisions, mistakes, pivots and lessons behind the polished case studies.

Follow Still Loading and subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode.

Ginny Nicholls: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginnynicholls/

What if the biggest thing holding back retail transformation isn't the technology at all?

Meriel Neighbour has spent her career delivering some of the UK's most complex retail transformation programmes, working across brands including Clarks, Ted Baker, Selfridges, ASOS, Matches Fashion, Hobbs, Boots and River Island.

But her career didn't start in technology.

It started serving customers, working in hospitality and developing pub concepts — an experience that shaped a very different philosophy on transformation: technology only matters if it makes the business and customer experience better.

In Episode 6 of Still Loading, we get into what transformation really looks like when the PowerPoints end and delivery begins.

Meriel shares what happens when a major programme starts going wrong, why she's replaced systems integrators mid-transformation, and why successful transformation depends as much on relationships, communication and change management as it does on architecture.

We also explore why so many retailers still operate stores, ecommerce, apps, marketplaces and social commerce through separate P&Ls — despite the customer seeing only one brand.

Then we look forward: composable commerce, MACH architecture, AI, agentic shopping, unified baskets and the possibility of a world where customers shop across brands and channels without ever thinking about where the transaction actually happens.

And that creates a much bigger question:

If the technology to create connected commerce increasingly exists, what's actually stopping retailers from doing it?

🎙️ Still Loading — Episode 6
Retail Doesn't Have a Technology Problem. It Has a Business Problem.
With Meriel Neighbour

#StillLoading #StillLoadingPodcast #Retail #Ecommerce #DigitalTransformation #RetailTechnology #ConnectedCommerce #Omnichannel #MACHArchitecture #ComposableCommerce #CustomerExperience #AI #AgenticCommerce #RetailInnovation

Your Customer Doesn't Care About Your Channels.
The biggest retail innovation might be getting the basics right.

Retail has never had more technology, data or ways to reach customers.

But have we made it more complicated than it needs to be?

In Episode 5 of Still Loading, I sit down with retail expert Melissa Moore to explore what decades of change in retail have taught her about what actually matters.

We talk about why businesses still struggle to put the customer at the centre, how separate ecommerce and store teams can create silos the customer neither sees nor cares about, and why technology is only useful when the fundamentals underneath it work.

We get into:

• Why your customer doesn't care whether you call it DTC, retail, ecommerce or omnichannel
• The organisational structures that can accidentally work against the customer
• Why empowering frontline people is still one of retail's biggest opportunities
• Whether businesses really understand their customers as well as they think
• What great customer experience actually looks like
• AI, personalisation and where technology genuinely adds value
• Why innovation shouldn't mean abandoning the fundamentals

The big takeaway?

Technology changes. Shopping changes. But understanding your customer, empowering your people and delivering a great experience never goes out of date.

Maybe the biggest innovation in retail isn't another channel, platform or piece of technology.

Maybe it's getting the basics right.

🎙️ Still Loading — the real stories behind the results.

#StillLoading #StillLoadingPodcast #Retail #Ecommerce #CustomerExperience #Omnichannel #RetailStrategy #DigitalTransformation #RetailInnovation #AI #Marketing #Leadership #CustomerCentricity

The ecommerce playbook isn't what it used to be.

Customer acquisition is becoming more expensive. Marketplaces and social commerce continue to evolve. AI is beginning to reshape how people discover and buy products. And with agentic commerce on the horizon, brands may soon have even less control over the customer journey than they do today.

In this episode of Still Loading, I'm joined by Peter Young to explore what all of this means for the future of ecommerce.

Together we discuss:

• Is DTC right for every brand?
• How marketplaces, social commerce and DTC should work together.
• Can brands ever achieve truly "clean" data?
• Whether rising marketing costs will price smaller brands out of the market.
• What happens to brand building when AI starts shopping on our behalf.
• How challenger brands can still compete and outgrow established players.

No polished case studies.

No perfect answers.

Just an honest conversation about where ecommerce is heading and how brands can adapt.

🎙️ Still Loading is a podcast exploring the real stories behind the results.

Because nobody has it all figured out.

We're all still loading.

#StillLoadingPodcast #Ecommerce #DigitalMarketing #RetailMedia #Marketplace #SocialCommerce #DTC #AI #MarketingStrategy #BrandGrowth #CustomerExperience #Podcast

Find Beth on Instagram: @Beth__Norton

Beth Norton started her career running a fashion, travel and lifestyle blog while still at university. It became a personal brand, a business, and eventually the foundation of a 12-year career leading brand, content and communications strategies across some of the most interesting high-growth SaaS and ecommerce businesses in the UK.

She's been Head of Content at THG Ingenuity, Senior Director of Global Brand and Content at Amplience — and she's now the founder of True Meridian, a strategic advisory helping technology companies turn complexity into clarity.

In this episode we go past the polished version.

Beth talks about what it was really like inside THG during a period of public turbulence — and whether she ever privately questioned the direction. Why she walked away from a Senior Director title to start something from scratch. And the adjustment that genuinely surprised her about going out on her own.

Then we get into what she knows deeply — why technology companies consistently get brand wrong, how AI is creating a dangerous tension between content volume and brand distinctiveness, why senior leaders resist building their own voice even when they know it works, and what a decade of keynote speaking has taught her about how people actually absorb ideas versus how we think they do.

No highlight reel. No perfect answers. Just an honest conversation from someone still figuring it out.

Still loading. Just like the rest of us.

#StillLoading #StillLoadingPodcast #BrandStrategy #ContentStrategy #EcommerceMarketing #SaaSMarketing #TechMarketing #MarketingLeadership #ExecutiveThoughtLeadership #AIMarketing #DigitalMarketing #MarketingPodcast #WomenInMarketing #StartupFounder #BrandBuilding #FractionalMarketing #TrueMeridian

Most ecommerce brands treat brand marketing and performance marketing as two separate conversations — two separate budgets, two separate teams, often two separate agencies pulling in different directions.

Matt Roffe thinks that's the problem.

Matt is a fractional marketing director working with ecommerce brands across food and drink, fashion, homeware and consumer goods. His clients include Hiut Denim, Stellar Cookware and Saicho Sparkling Tea. He's worked brand-side and agency-side across THG, Cotswold Outdoor, Ribble Cycles and Impression Digital. And he organises The Marketing Meetup Cheltenham — which means he has a broader pulse on what's actually happening inside marketing teams right now than most people you'll hear on a podcast.

His philosophy is straightforward but rare: brand and performance are one discipline, not two competing budgets. The numbers and the narrative.

In this episode we get into the reality of fractional marketing — what it actually looks like day to day, why some businesses should avoid it entirely, and the honest answer to the question every founder asks: shouldn't you just hire someone full time?

We also dig into the in-housing trend that's sweeping ecommerce right now — the accountability argument, the agency vs in-house debate, what brands actually lose when they bring everything inside, and whether the relationships agencies have with Google and Meta are as valuable as agencies would have you believe.

Then we get into measurement — what a good marketing framework actually looks like for an ecommerce brand, where most businesses get it catastrophically wrong, and what "the numbers and the narrative" means when a board is asking for ROI and a brand team is talking about storytelling.

And of course, AI. Where it's genuinely changing how marketing teams operate inside ecommerce brands right now, and where it's being completely overhyped.

No polished pitch. No perfect answers. Just an honest conversation from someone who's in it every day.

Still loading. Just like the rest of us.

Matt Roffe:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattroffe/

Website: https://www.mattroffe.co.uk/

#StillLoading #StillLoadingPodcast #FirstClick
#FractionalMarketing #EcommerceMarketing #BrandMarketing #PerformanceMarketing #MarketingEffectiveness #InHouseMarketing #AgencyVsInHouse #MarketingMeasurement
#EcommerceGrowth #DigitalMarketing #MarketingStrategy #MarketingLeadership #MarketingPodcast #EcommercePodcast #BusinessPodcast
#MarketingMeetup #HiutDenim #CotswoldOutdoor #THG

What does 20 years in marketing actually look like — honestly?

Steven Doherty has worked at Sky, Discovery, Standard Life and abrdn. He launched "Believe in Better" — a positioning line still running 18 years later. He helped land a three-year Andy Murray sponsorship deal. He delivered a multi-million pound global rebrand from a one-page CEO slide in under six months.

On paper, it looks like a career that went exactly to plan.

In this episode, we go past the paper version.

Steven talks about what it actually felt like to navigate a major public rebrand from the inside, why he took a career break after more than a decade in FTSE 100 financial services, and what the transition from leading large teams to running your own independent consultancy really looks like, the adjustment nobody warned him about.

We also get into the stuff he knows deeply, brand measurement, the agency vs in-house debate, where AI sits in brand strategy right now, and why the industry still hasn't cracked marketing effectiveness.

This is the version that didn't make the CV.

Still loading. Just like the rest of us.