Tjaša Kravanja ·
I canceled a launch hours before it went live
Hours before a launch, I told the team we were not launching.
The core journey was not ready.
The offer in the campaign was difficult to find. One of the main conversion mechanics did not work properly. Problems we had already raised were still unresolved.
Distribution was lined up anyway.
Absolutely not.
There is a particular kind of panic that happens just before launch. The date is public. Content is ready. The team is tired. Moving the launch feels more embarrassing than shipping whatever is currently on the screen.
That is usually when someone says we can patch it live.
You can. You can also pay to show thousands of people that your product does not work.
Marketing does not rescue a broken product. It gives the broken product witnesses.
Every partner would have sent users into the same journey. Those users would have looked for the thing we promised, struggled to find it and then hit a flow that was not working properly.
The campaign report would probably have blamed traffic quality, partner performance or conversion.
The easiest response would have been to add more distribution.
That would have produced a larger version of the same problem.
So I stopped the launch.
It was uncomfortable. People had worked toward the date. Partners were waiting. Delaying created more work and made the internal conversation worse for a while.
It was still cheaper than launching.
A missed date disappoints the people already inside the company. A broken launch introduces the company to everyone else as broken.
This is why I treat launch readiness as part of growth, not something another team finishes before marketing arrives.
Before I send traffic, I want boring answers to boring questions:
- Can a new user find the thing the campaign promises?
- Does the core action work from beginning to end?
- Do partner links lead to the correct experience?
- Can we track the actions the campaign is supposed to produce?
- Has someone tested the journey without being told where everything is?
If the answer is no, the campaign is not ready.
The launch date does not change that. The content schedule does not change that. The amount already spent does not change that.
We eventually agreed that stopping was the right decision.
The point was restraint.
Growth sometimes means finding another channel, increasing the budget or pushing harder. Sometimes it means refusing to send one more person into a journey you already know is broken.
No partner blast to make everyone look busy. No patching the core promise after people arrive. No buying more traffic to avoid admitting the product is not ready for the traffic it already has.
I would stop it again. Checklist:
Read the original article and attached checklist on X ↗
Republished from the original X article, published 1 September 2026. The original attached checklist image is available through the source link.