In the last decade, marketing has been sprinting. AI tools generate campaign copy in minutes, dashboards tell us which creatives are “winning” in real time, and automation schedules our every touchpoint. The machinery hums at a speed that would make the Mad Men era look like a leisurely afternoon in a corner office.
And yet, amidst all this speed, I find myself wondering: Are we actually becoming better marketers, or simply faster at executing tasks?
The seduction of velocity
Speed in marketing isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s intoxicating.
When a trend appears on Monday morning and your brand is riding it by lunchtime, there’s an undeniable thrill. Velocity allows us to be present, relevant, and visible in a way that was unthinkable even 15 years ago.
But there’s a subtle trade-off we don’t always acknowledge: speed often rewards what is easiest to measure, not what is most meaningful to build. A perfectly optimised click-through rate tells you something, but it rarely tells you if your brand is earning loyalty, trust, or cultural relevance.
Craft is not the same as output
Some of the most enduring campaigns in history were born from deep immersion, be it in the audience’s lives, in cultural context, or in human behaviour. That requires time, curiosity, and a willingness to sit with ambiguity before rushing to execution.
But if you look at today’s environment, with its sprints and A/B tests, it can make that kind of patience feel almost irresponsible. If you can produce something now, why wait to produce something better? The irony is, our tools are smarter than ever, but if they’re only used to accelerate execution, we risk becoming operators of a machine rather than architects of meaning.
The false comfort of data
We can’t do without data, but it can also be deceptively comforting. When the numbers are pointing us towards an easy decision, it’s tempting to bypass the harder, messier questions: What’s the emotional truth our brand should stand for? Are we telling stories people will remember a decade from now?
Metrics can measure behaviour, but they rarely measure belief. And belief is the currency that brands ultimately trade in. Without it, all the impressions in the world are just noise.
Better is slower (at least sometimes)
The best marketing has always been a blend of intuition, craft, and evidence. Technology should make us more informed and more capable, but that doesn’t mean it should make us impatient.
Sometimes the better move is to resist the urge to ship the first draft the algorithm approves of. To step back, interrogate the insight, sharpen the story, and make something that resonates beyond the scroll.
Being a “better” marketer isn’t just about delivering faster. It’s about knowing when to slow down, when to question the brief, and when to risk not being first if it means you can be unforgettable.
A profession worth protecting
Marketing is one of the few professions that straddles art and science. Our industry’s evolution should deepen both sides of that equation. Tools and trends will continue to change the speed at which we operate, but our responsibility is to make sure they also elevate the quality of what we create.
Because if all we do is execute faster, we may win the race of the moment. But if we focus on becoming better, we might just win something rarer: the right to matter.
