Scrolling through reels is exhilarating. Until it isn’t. The quick dopamine rush feels good in the moment, but it leaves you drained, distracted, and no closer to anything meaningful.
That’s exactly how modern AI-first marketing feels. Brands are churning campaigns at breakneck speed. They create spikes that look impressive on dashboards but rarely build trust or loyalty. If reels are junk food for the brain, fast marketing is junk food for brands.
The Job of a Marketer Hasn’t Changed
For all the hype around AI, the fundamentals of marketing remain the same. The job is to drive growth by building brands people remember and choose. The role is not just to generate impressions or clicks. It is to shape perception, build trust, and create preference at the moment of choice.
The problem? Fast marketing has made us forget this. Chasing quick wins creates noise, not memory. Short-term hacks drive spikes, but they don’t build structures in the mind. And in an AI-led discovery ecosystem, where platforms like Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity decide what is credible, being remembered and trusted is the ultimate advantage.
Fast marketing may give you bursts of activity, but it doesn’t build enduring value. That’s why we need a counterbalance. The human antidote to this speed-obsessed, AI-first marketing is what I call Slow Marketing.
Why Slow Marketing is the Human Antidote
Slow Marketing isn’t about moving at a snail’s pace. It is about moving with intent. It prioritises credibility before conversion, customer needs before vanity metrics, and compounding brand assets over one-off campaigns.
Audiences today are fatigued by generic content. According to the Content Marketing Institute, intent-driven content generates 78% higher engagement. Harvard Business Review notes that transparent messaging increases conversion rates by 51%. Trust, not traffic, has become the key differentiator.
If fast marketing is the dopamine rush, Slow Marketing is the nutrition. It sustains, strengthens, and compounds over time. It builds the foundations that outlast quarterly cycles.
Slow Marketing is Not Anti-AI
Let’s be clear. Slow Marketing doesn’t reject technology. It rejects thoughtless speed. AI is a powerful lever when used with clarity and purpose. The mistake is letting AI set the agenda instead of amplifying human intent.
Here’s how to use AI smartly in marketing:
- AI for efficiency. Use it to uncover patterns at scale, from clustering customer intent to surfacing blind spots in your strategy. That frees humans to focus on judgment and creativity.
- AI for optimisation. Apply it to improve discoverability. Structure content not only for Google but also for AI-driven answers. That means clear FAQs, schema, and EEAT-compliant storytelling designed to be lifted into AI Overviews or cited in generative platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity.
- AI for scaling distribution. Let AI help amplify distribution of brand IPs like podcasts, research reports, or communities that compound in value year after year.
In an age addicted to instant gratification, it takes courage to slow down. But the brands that will outgrow the noise are the ones that focus on fundamentals: intent, credibility, trust, and human connection.
AI can make you faster. But if you only play the speed game, you’ll be forgotten. The brands that slow down, get human, and build with intent will be the ones winning in the AI-first world.
