Mark Leach · Centre Channel
Everything has an ROI. That’s the problem.
A hundred initiatives will cross your desk this year, each with a business case attached. Your business has the capacity to do five of them well. The work is knowing which five, and seeing them through.
Too many good ideas
Every week something new lands with a return attached.
A replatform, a data project, an AI pilot, a loyalty scheme. Taken one at a time, each is defensible, and that is exactly what makes this hard.
Growth brands don’t usually stall because they backed a bad initiative. They stall because they backed too many. Bandwidth, culture and senior capacity are finite, and every yes quietly spends all three. The cost of a wrong priority is rarely the money. It’s the right things that didn’t happen while everyone was busy.
There are maybe five decisions that actually matter this year. Five. The whole job is knowing which five.
Whose side of the table
I’m independent.
I don’t sell software, I don’t run a delivery team that needs feeding, and the advisory is designed to be stopped, not renewed.
I’ve spent twenty years on both sides of this table, running eCommerce P&Ls at brands like Missguided and building an agency that sold to Brainlabs. I’ve been the operator and the agency, and I’ve hidden problems in both places myself. That’s how I know where to look.
The method
The work runs on three questions.
What do we know. What’s the pattern. What’s the play.
The first sits everyone on the same side of the table, because it admits that some things are not yet known. The second is the diagnostic, the harder question in the middle, and it is where the value lives. The third is the operator’s question, the one that implies sequence and timing rather than a slide.
The questions are simple on purpose. Simple travels. What you’re paying for isn’t the questions, it’s the pattern recognition behind the middle one, built over twenty years of watching the same mistakes wear different logos.
I call the method Signal, because that’s what it surfaces: the few moves that matter, out of the hundred that could.
Proof
The brief was not the problem.
Board nervous about a £300k+ replatform decision, three agencies pitching three different answers. Led discovery and governance.
+8% conversion · +12% AOV · on time, on budget
Rising SaaS costs killing margin. A fashion brand asking about site speed and an app contract, when the real problem was simpler: they’d outgrown their vendors and were renting capability they should own.
$600k in annual fees eliminated · twelve-month payback
Major transformation for an eight-figure consumer brand, where the product data underneath couldn’t carry the ambition. The harder play was the right one.
Delivered · zero trading days lost
Six months embedded at Travel Counsellors: digital experience and AI adoption. Non-executive advisor on technology and AI to a PE-backed consumer brand.
Retained, both rooms
“Mark is a true expert in eCommerce. I’ve experienced how he accelerates growth and builds strong teams. He remains a trusted advisor of mine.”
Gareth Jones · Chairman, Abbott Lyon“We were stuck with some UX questions that we couldn’t see a way through. Your perspective made us see the bigger picture and unlock what we think is the right path forward.”
Andy Whyte · CEO, MEDDICC“I can honestly say Mark is the most knowledgeable person I have met when it comes to conversion, customer journey improvements and all things digital.”
Paul Masters · CFO“The depth of knowledge coupled with experience client side allows Mark not only to see around corners, but to deliver practical strategy in a way that brings a client and business on a complex journey, simplified.”
Matt Adams · Global COO, AssemblyWhere AI fits
AI is the loudest source of the problem this page describes.
It has never been easier to add another plausible initiative to the list, and never harder to know which ones deserve your team’s finite attention.
The brands winning with AI didn’t start with AI. They started with clarity.
The book
Look Again
Why clear brands pull ahead now everyone has AI, and the rest just spend.
The long-form argument for everything on this page. Hardback, 2027. Launch readers get the first chapter before anyone else.
Ways in
Two ways to work together.
The Clarity Diagnostic
£15,000, fixed. Walks the three questions through data, technology and team. Ends with the priorities, the sequence, and what to ignore. Designed to be finished, not renewed.
Advisory
A seat at the table each month. Same fee, fewer days, no dependency built. Independent oversight of agencies and team, until the investment actually works.
The fit: consumer brands, £20M to £150M, ambitious leadership, and the appetite to choose. Not for deck-wanters or unresourced budgets.
Let’s talk
Thirty minutes is enough to know.
No pitch. Just a conversation about where you are and what needs to happen next.
mark@centrechannel.com · +44 7429 164 215