The world is selling us on speed.
But does that speed serve your interests?
At B2B Forum 2025, Ann Handley suggested to a packed audience that we make time for ASAP Marketing: As Slow As Possible.
To dig deeper into Ann’s reasoning, watch this clip from Ann’s B2B Forum Keynote or read the transcript below.
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The challenge isn’t to slow everything down.
It’s to remember which parts deserve our speed—which parts need to go fast because that’s the way our world works—and which parts actually demand our slowness.
This is the tool that helps you do that. Let’s map it out together!
On one axis, we’re measuring impact over time. We’re measuring how lasting or fleeting the work is, the opportunity is, whether the effects are reversible or irreversible.
On the other axis, we’re measuring growth potential. Is this low growth potential, or is this high?
And when you put these two together, you get four quadrants. Four different ways that we show up in our work and in our world…
And each has a different feel to it.
In the bottom left down here: autopilot. Low growth, fleeting impact. It’s the everyday stuff that we do as part of our regular lives. The boxes to check, the things to handle, just get rid of it, get it off your plate. Stakes are low.
Upper left: the flash zone. This is the dopamine quadrant. You hit publish and boom, you get a spike of results in one way or another. Maybe it’s likes, maybe it’s attention, maybe it’s social buzz. You start to get some activity, but a week later, like… gone.
This is the sugar rush of B2B marketing. It has growth, but it has very shallow roots. It’s great for energy, but it’s terrible for endurance.
Again, not bad all the time. Candy is fine sometimes. Yet it’s often where most marketing lives. We need to think about it sparingly.
Down here, bottom right: the imperfect leap. The things that you do that, over time, will move the needle. You spend some time and attention and care on it and ultimately it sustains you, but maybe it’s low growth.
An example of that, for me personally, would be my email newsletter.
I send it out every other week. The deadline is there. It’s not necessarily growing my skills, but it offers me an enduring platform, right? It counts. It sustains me. It sustains my relationships with all of you. It moves me closer to lasting impact.
And finally, upper right.
This is the as-slow-as-possible zone!
This is where the Rampaging Sloth thrives. It’s what’s known as a “slow-ment.”
And the slow-ment is a moment that deserves your full attention. The one where the stakes are incredibly high, the stakes are high, and this is where slowing down isn’t hesitation. It’s not going to get you thrown in jail.
It’s leadership of our programs, and of ourselves.
And this is the box that we need to intentionally step into in marketing. It’s a box we need to live in more often than we do right now.
Because the Rampaging Sloth invites marketing to ask two things:
“Does this grow who we are as a brand, as a company, or just what we ship?”
And, “does this build a brand, or just buy us a moment?”
So what can this actually look like for us? What does a Slow Motion Slam look like in marketing? And how do we show its value?
(“It’s the cow!” Oh, I didn’t know he was still here. Great, I’m glad you’re still here. He’s really into it.)
Now, how do we show value?
Here’s the deal. I have a lot to say on this. I have a book about this topic that’s coming out in 2027, because I am the original Rampaging Sloth. It’s going to take me a minute to get it to you.
But for now, I want to share two thoughts on it. Two ways that we can rampage responsibly as marketers for ourselves. Two ways to bring that energy into the world.
One tactical, and one more… philosophical, I guess I would say.
The first is to make meaning measurable.
This is the tactical way. I think if we want the Sloth to matter, we need metrics that reward meaning, and not just performance.
We’re all in on performance metrics. We all do these MQLs and impressions.
I think we need to layer on, if you’re not already, Rampaging Sloth Depth Metrics that capture long-term value.
Things like brand search queries and scroll depth and story shares. And two of my most favorites, which is one is called the OWBR, the “open to write back rate.”
How many people open your email and are inspired to write back to you? An incredible rate to track.
And secondly is the resubscribe rate. How many people will subscribe to you when they’re at one job? Then they move opportunities and they resubscribe to you again… and they write to tell you!
That is the holy grail for us in B2B marketing.
The “Depth Dashboard” might also capture qualitative sentiment.
Things like how did it make people feel? Not just what people said or what they did, but why they shared it and how it changed perception or trust or how it created opportunities.
And how can you find that? You can look in all of these places.
And why is this important?
It’s because the supervillian knows that what’s visible becomes valuable. He’s now all in on this idea. He is now fully converted.
The second thing is, more philosophical now…
The real power of that Slow Motion Slam, that moment when the Sloth is just winding up.
It’s not in the power of the Slam. It’s in the power of the windup. He can’t pack a wallop unless he takes the time, the patience, and the care to wind up first.
That’s what helps him nail it.
And that’s what we need to remember, I think in marketing [and] for ourselves too, that even though progress may not look like progress, if we’re working on something that ultimately is important to us that’s going to help us grow, that is going to deliver enduring impact and we want to pack a wallop, then we need to focus on how do we actually do that? How do we shore up the ability to do that?
Because then maybe it doesn’t look like much, but you’re doing a lot. You’re doing the work you need to do. And the windup, honestly, is what we can do together here over the next two days in this room, in the breakouts, in the shenanigans, in MPB2B After Dark. All of those things.
And I can’t give you a prescription for this one.
I can’t say, “this is what you need to do,” because it’s going to vary depending on who you are, what matters to you and what you want to focus on.
Because here’s the deal.
As much as I’ve talked for the past 30 minutes about all of this in a B2B marketing context, the decision to balance the Cow with the Sloth is bigger than that.
Because here’s the truth, most of us live in Cow mode all the time. I mean, I do. It’s tempting to stay in that sort of high-energy, sugar-rush, dopamine mode.
It’s a nice place.
You feel valuable. You feel valued.
But ultimately I’d ask us to ask ourselves, “how do I want to grow? Is this actually serving me? What kind of impact do I want to have?”
Because it’s not just about marketing programs or campaigns.
It’s about us.
We carry Sloth and Cow inside our program. Certainly the MQLs and the long-term brand stories and the connections that are lifelong.
We carry both inside our creative work.
That instinct that we have to sort of just publish it and get it off our plate? “It’s good enough, it’s done.”
And in ways that we know we should just pull back and maybe just wait a minute.
And the ways that we tend to over-rely on AI sometimes. And ways that we know that we can maybe not rely on AI too much all the time.
Instead, we should use it in service of our creativity and not the other way around.
But also, we carry both inside of ourselves, inside each of us, the part that wants to show up, cross things off the list, and the part that jumps from thing to thing.
And so here’s the deal.
For decades, the world has sold us speed and efficiency. It’s cheaper and easier than ever before. It’s abundant. It is not going anywhere.
But I think we need to figure out at what point we want to use speed and at what point it isn’t serving us.
And so I want to leave you with this question to carry you forward into the next two days:
When does fast serve us, and when does it steal from us? And how does it steal from us?
Because… nothing is slowing down. It’s abundant, it’s not going anywhere.
But what’s scarce now is judgment about what’s actually extraordinary in all of our programs and in all of us.
What’s [more rare] still is the taste that shapes it, who we are becoming, and most of all, the joy in what we do.
Because that, my friends, is the superpower.
Published December 4, 2025
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