Journal
How a UK retail growth team actually briefs an attribution review
The briefs that waste the first week are the ones that list every channel the brand has ever touched and then ask for ‘the truth’. Attribution is not a courtroom. It is a reading of the files you have, against a conversion you are willing to defend in a budget meeting.
Name the conversion in a sentence a finance partner would accept. ‘Completed checkout excluding staff orders’ is a conversion. ‘Engagement’ is not. If two conversions matter, say so; that is a scope change, not a flourish.
List the arguments the pack must settle. Typical ones from retail teams we have sat with: whether paid social is only harvesting branded demand; whether the affiliate programme is claiming orders already committed in email; whether a regional radio burst ever joined the CRM. If you cannot name the argument, you are commissioning decoration.
Send a campaign dictionary, even if it is ugly. We would rather group ‘SS26_PRO_LAU_xx’ with a human note than invent a taxonomy you will not recognise on the wall map.
State who will sit in the readout. If the commercial director will only see a three-page cut, tell us. The full pack can still exist; the cut has to be designed, not improvised on the train.