In order to organize chaos sometimes you need to start with saying clearly and loud: Stop! Slow down, take a deep breath and think. Only then start to act – not the other way around. This attitude should be the inspiration for the content marketing environment in 2017, according to Ann Handley’s CMW2016 speech. Would be great if it was.

Of course, the first time Ula mentioned the slow CM idea we started making jokes, juxtaposing the concept with tight deadlines. We could see our client’s faces when we tell them that tight deadlines and rush are a bad choice and that from now on we choose the slow working style. But when we ran out of jokes and talked it over, the philosophy didn’t seem so silly anymore.

Slowing down is the dream of many employees both at our agency and in your marketing and communication departments, but it’s not about cutting down responsibilities, but about making wise choices and sometimes even about wise resignation. Ironically, you can gain by giving something up. How come? It’s simple: sometimes instead of grabbing all the marketing possibilities and channels available it is better to ask yourself the questions: WHAT do I/does my company or brand really need? Which communication and promotion method is consistent with my company/brand’s character? Do I need to use Twitter and Snapchat? Maybe I’m just losing my time and money? It’s better to slow down and choose the best possible solution instead of ordering everything ‘just in case.’ Instead of hectic and greedy marketing, choose slow marketing that can professionally support your business.

How do you introduce slow marketing into your everyday working habits? Try to give yourself more time before starting any project to carefully think about your goal. The foundation of slow content marketing is deliberate strategic thinking. Equally important is to carefully choose the best media, quality of content and image. You need to react to the new ideas popping up along the way, but you need to do so calmly, without throwing impulsively at everything that is being trendy. Slow content marketing is also about making unusual moves and avoiding banality.
Slow marketing is like craftwork – it’s a different quality. Just as it’s worth waiting for handsewn shoes and to pay a little more to get a unique product of highest quality, it is also worth to devote time – and money – to e.g. making unique hand drawings for the project, instead of using stock illustrations.

An interesting interpretation of slow marketing comes from blogger Evelyn Rodriguez, who understands it as being focused on human-customer and going back to one-to-one relations. This means more talking and meeting as opposed to sending urging emails. This agrees with the attitude of our Director General Bożena Makowska, who believes that meeting a client face to face is essential to have mutual understanding and to be sure that the project goes in the right direction. By contrast, Tad Hargrave on his blog Marketing for hippies talks about slow marketing in the context of patience and the time required to add finishing touches to the project: the product, packaging, communication. And authors of slowmarketing.org add to this list also the time marketers need to experiment, because in order to be successful you need to be able to twiddle a little bit with all the ingredients in the kitchen called business.

Are we ready – us in the agency and you, our client – to give ourselves that time? Surely not right away and not in all circumstances, but it’s definitely worth following this path. At a slow pace 🙂

Or maybe ASAP?