There's a quote I've loved for years:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.”
I think about this a lot in business.
Sales slow, so we launch a promotion. A competitor releases something new, so we start developing our own version. An agency suggests another campaign, so we add it to the calendar.
Something happens. We react.
But what if we gave ourselves a little more space between the two?
I've always found that some of my best ideas come when I'm away from my desk.
Walking, swimming, on holiday. Usually when I'm not actively trying to solve anything.
There's something about stepping away from the noise that gives your mind room to wander, make connections and see things differently.
And yet, in business, we so rarely give ourselves that space.
Space to question what's actually happening. To consider our options. To come back to our goals before deciding what to do next.
That's what I mean by Strategic Slowness.
Not moving slowly. Not overthinking every decision.
Just making sure we're responding thoughtfully rather than reacting automatically.
The important shouldn't have to become urgent
One of the things I see constantly in growing businesses is how easily the urgent crowds out the important.
There's always something that needs your attention today. An email to answer, a campaign to approve, a retailer to respond to, a problem to solve.
And all those little things fill your diary.
Meanwhile, the bigger questions get pushed aside.
Where are we going? What's actually working? Are we spending our time and money on the right things? What should we stop doing?
They're important questions, but they rarely come with a deadline.
So we put them off.
Until sales slow, margins tighten or the business starts feeling harder to run than it should.
Suddenly, the important has become urgent.
Strategic Slowness is about making space for the important before it becomes urgent.
Not just when things aren't working. Especially when they are.
Marketing starts before the marketing
There's a Seth Godin article I often come back to called When do we get to the marketing part?
It's a reminder that marketing doesn't begin when you brief an agency, engage an influencer or start spending money on advertising.
It starts much earlier.
When you're deciding what to make. Who it's for. What need it meets. And why someone might choose it over everything else available to them.
This is something I think about constantly when working with food, drink and wellness brands.
You can have beautiful packaging, great distribution and a healthy marketing budget.
But if the product doesn't meet a genuine consumer need, or give people a compelling reason to choose it, all that marketing has a very difficult job to do.
And yet so often, marketing is the thing businesses turn to when a product isn't selling.
Perhaps the question shouldn't be how do we get more people to see this?
Perhaps it should be have we given the right people a good enough reason to want it?
This is why I love bringing marketing, PR and partnership thinking into the business early. While there's still an opportunity to make the product, the story or the experience more interesting.
Not after everything's been developed and we're scrambling for a launch idea.
You can't buy your way to being interesting
I think there's an important distinction between earned, rented and owned reach.
Rented reach is attention you pay to access.
Advertising, sponsored influencers, retail promotions and discounting. All useful tools, in the right circumstances.
But when the spending stops, much of that attention disappears.
Earned reach is the attention your brand generates because people genuinely want to talk about it.
A customer recommending your product to a friend. A chef putting it on their menu. A journalist deciding it's worth writing about. Someone sharing it because they love it, not because they've been paid to.
And owned reach is the audience and customer relationships you've built yourself. Your email list, your website, your direct connection with the people who buy from you.
The strongest brands think about all three.
I'm not against paid marketing. Far from it. But I do think businesses sometimes rely on it to do a job that should have started much earlier.
Marketing spend should amplify demand, not be responsible for inventing it.
Find your people before you try to reach everyone
Another place where a little strategic thinking upfront can make an enormous difference is understanding who you're actually trying to reach.
One of the biggest mistakes I see growing brands make is trying to reach everyone too soon.
But not everyone needs to care about your product.
At least not yet.
Who are the people most likely to love it? Where do they spend time? What do they read, listen to, buy and talk about? Where do they gather, online and in the real world?
Perhaps there's a particular community of home cooks, a group of independent retailers, a handful of chefs, or people with a shared need that your product meets exceptionally well.
Those clusters matter.
Because when something is genuinely relevant to a group of people who already talk to each other, it has a much better chance of travelling.
You don't always need a bigger audience.
Sometimes you need to understand a smaller one much better.
Distribution isn't demand
This is particularly relevant for food and drink brands.
Getting into a major retailer can feel like the big moment. And it is an achievement.
But being on shelf doesn't mean someone is going to pick you up.
A supermarket promotion isn't a marketing strategy. And distribution doesn't automatically create demand.
You still need to understand who will buy your product, why they'll choose it, how they'll discover it and what will make them come back.
Otherwise, you can find yourself spending more and more money trying to make the numbers work, without addressing the reason people aren't buying in the first place.
Again, this is where better thinking before execution can make an enormous difference.
Slow down the thinking. Get clear. Then move.
None of this is an argument for endlessly researching, planning or waiting until everything is perfect.
Quite the opposite.
Strategic Slowness is about doing enough thinking upfront that you can move with confidence.
It's about creating space to ask the important questions, before they become urgent.
Understanding your customer. Getting clear on your brand and business goals. Knowing which opportunities deserve your attention and which ones don't.
And then making decisions, briefing the right people and getting on with it.
Because when you know what matters, you can move faster on the things that actually count.
Slow down the thinking. Get clear. Then move.
If your business has grown to the point where there are more ideas, opportunities and decisions than you know what to do with, here's how we can work together.
Katie x