Your campaign worked five times too well. Whose failure is that?

Last week we published the story of how we took our own product out of stock with a single DM. Two units sent to a UK creator, no fee, fourteen days unavailable to buy.

Everybody who read it agreed it was a good story. Nobody agreed on whose fault it was. So we are asking.

Your creator activation lands five times harder than forecast and the product goes dark for two weeks. Whose failure is that — marketing's or operations'?

Four answers, and we have heard all of them said with total confidence

"Marketing's. Obviously." You created demand you could not service. Forecasting the size of your own campaign is part of the brief, not a favour you do for the warehouse. If you cannot predict it, do not fire it. — The blind spot: this logic, followed honestly, means never running anything that might overperform.

"Operations'. Obviously." Demand is the win. Supply exists to meet demand — that is the entire job description. A team that treats a sell-out as marketing's problem has quietly redefined its own mandate as "keep the forecast comfortable." — The blind spot: nobody staffs for a spike they were never told about.

"Nobody's. It is a good problem." Sold out means validated. Ride it, restock, move on. — The blind spot: this is the most expensive sentence in retail. On a marketplace, availability feeds ranking, so a two-week gap does not cost you the fortnight, it costs the velocity that earned the ranking — and you buy that back at full price.

"Leadership's." Neither team owned the number where the two meet. There was no line in anyone's objectives called "demand we can actually fulfil." — The blind spot: convenient. It is also the answer that requires someone senior to change something, which is why it gets said last.

Our bias, and we are not hedging it

The org chart is the answer. Whoever owns the forecast owns the stock-out. If the forecast belongs to marketing, the stock-out is marketing's. If it belongs to supply chain, it is theirs. And if you cannot name the owner in one breath, it is leadership's — because an unowned number is a decision nobody made.