Stan Woods is a B2B marketing strategist and creative agency founder. After 25 years at Velocity, which he co-founded, he now offers advice to ambitious B2B brands. His writing argues for long-term, brand-led marketing and creative ideas instead of relying on short-term lead-generation metrics.
Stan Woods is a B2B marketing strategist and creative agency founder, best known in this material for co-founding Velocity with Doug Kessler and spending 25 years there.
His writing argues that B2B marketers should move beyond short-term lead-generation tactics and build distinctive brands through long-term thinking and creativity.
Follow his work for a candid account of why familiar go-to-market practices can fail, alongside practical material such as a CMO-focused workbook and interviews with marketing leaders.
Woods connects a sharp diagnosis of B2B marketing with concrete examples of what he thinks should change.
He describes prospects being rushed into sales pipelines after downloading an eBook and receiving indiscriminate email “nurture” campaigns, then argues for ending the false choice between brand and performance.
In his account of 25 years in the field, he adds a less comfortable point: companies may say they want bold work but retreat to bland ideas when stakeholders get involved.
His recurring emphasis on creative “mojo” makes the argument more than a call for better metrics; it asks companies to earn attention and become memorable.
The selected posts also show different ways he develops these ideas: a long-form reflection, a workbook announcement, interviews, and recommendations of others’ work.
The supplied material does not include the referenced manifesto or workbook itself, so it supports understanding his argument but not assessing those resources in full.
Stan Woods co-founded the B2B agency Velocity with Doug Kessler and led it for 25 years before leaving in October 2025 to advise a small number of brands directly.
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Across his posts, three arguments repeat.
Most B2B companies are invisible rather than disliked, because clients who ask for ambition still let stakeholders water the work down and settle for bland.
The shift to short-term lead generation broke the link between how buyers buy and how vendors sell, so he wants the brand-versus-performance split abandoned rather than tuned.
And creativity, which he calls mojo, is what makes marketing cheaper and better — not the tooling clients are currently enamoured with.
He publishes by pairing a short LinkedIn post with a longer asset such as a manifesto, a workbook, a blog series or an interview, and he regularly points readers to other practitioners' work rather than only arguing solo.
Most B2B brands are invisible, not disliked
Stan Woods argues that clients say they want ambition or disruption but mostly stay cautious, letting stakeholders dilute good ideas and worrying about reputation, because they believe buyers want something middle of the road.
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He places corporate brands on a love spectrum: a few are anti-brands people actively dislike, a few are cult brands so loved they almost don't need to market, and the great majority sit in what he calls the 'meh zone'.
The problem there is not dislike but irrelevance — prospects never think about the company at all.
The diagnosis is a choice, not a budget limit: brands in a bare-knuckle fight for attention settle for bland anyway.
In the post written on leaving Velocity, Stan Woods puts '97.645% of all B2B companies' in the meh zone and contrasts that with anti-brands such as Ryanair, Virgin Media and Fox News, and cult brands such as Apple and Slack. He concludes that 'Average doesn't cut it today.'
Stan Woods frames this as the end point of a career arc he traces through three eras: broadcast marketing, then accountable data-led marketing, then what he now calls the AI era.
Stan Woods traces weak B2B results to marketers trading long-term plays and audience goodwill for short-term lead-generation metrics.
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Two behaviours recur in his account: rushing people into a sales pipeline because they downloaded an eBook, and 'nurturing' them by flooding inboxes with content that ignores their intelligence and their buying stage.
When those tactics produced worse results, he says, marketers doubled down.
His conclusion is that incremental tuning of the old go-to-market playbook is over, that the false dichotomy between brand and performance should be dropped, and that brand-led, long-term work is more strategic, not less accountable.
How customers buy, he argues, has outrun how most vendors sell.
Stan Woods describes what he credits to Jon Miller as 'the lead gen gumball machine', where the leads marketing generates are not the leads sales wants, and says the market has moved past linear inbound marketing in which 'first the marketing happened, then the sales'. In the same post he notes that critical data now hides in so many arcane channels that calculating ROI resembles Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and that AI tools threaten to make it worse.
Stan Woods defines mojo as swagger and confidence that signals 'you must pay attention', and argues B2B has suffered a dearth of it for as long as he can remember.
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To have mojo, he says, a company has to welcome creativity about itself, its products and its message.
His worry is that clients are so enamoured with AI that they will ignore the transformative power of creative ideas, when creativity is the thing that can carry a brand toward cult status, where marketing costs less and works much better.
The claim is made from his own agency's experience rather than as a general theory of advertising.
Stan Woods writes that Velocity 'flourished because we were at heart a creative shop', and contrasts that with clients who treat AI as a substitute for creative ambition. The destination he points to is the cult-brand end of his love spectrum, where loyalty reduces the cost of being noticed.
A recurring part of Stan Woods's publishing is convening and recommending other practitioners rather than writing only about his own analysis.
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He runs an interview series with B2B figures and treats their positions as reference points for the change he is describing. His own posts frame these guests' work rather than summarising their arguments in detail, so what the posts establish is who he reads, endorses and puts in front of his audience, not the substance of what those guests claim.
Stan Woods interviewed Anthony Kennada, founder and CEO of AudiencePlus, whose approach to building B2B audiences and pipeline he calls 'a discontinuity', and notes it was the third in a series that also included Jon Miller and Idi Ledergor. In a separate post he recommends an article by Adam Ketterer of Beneath, describing it as 'essentially a discussion of what we three think about the current state of positioning and branding for B2B tech'.
Long assets carry the substance, and the workbook is deliberately demanding
The LinkedIn posts work as entries rather than as the argument itself.
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Most carry one idea and a link, and the substance sits in longer pieces: a blog series, a manifesto, a CMO workbook and recorded interviews.
Stan Woods is explicit that the practical material is not a quick tactic — the workbook needs attention to detail, the right data and the right mindset before it pays off.
That shapes how the ideas are meant to be used: as a commitment adopted by a marketing leader, not a tip applied in an afternoon.
The workbook announcement follows a manifesto arguing that brand is back, and Stan Woods warns that the workbook 'is long and to follow its precepts you need attention to detail, the right data and the right mindset'. The accompanying blog series is pitched as a set of 'aha moments' about what has changed in B2B and what to do about it.
This is the single best starting point: it explains who Stan Woods is, why he left the agency he co-founded, and what he now argues about B2B marketing, all in one post.
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Stan Woods writes that he left Velocity after 25 years, having founded it with Doug Kessler.
The post runs through three lessons.
First, that clients say they want ambition or disruption but mostly stay cautious, letting stakeholders water down ideas; he places almost all B2B companies in a 'meh zone' where prospects do not actively dislike them so much as never think about them, and contrasts that with anti-brands and cult brands.
Second, that the shift to accountable, data-led marketing went too far: buyers now outrun how vendors sell, and he says working out ROI resembles Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, with AI tools likely to make it worse.
Third, that creativity and 'mojo' remain decisive, and that he worries clients enamoured with AI will ignore strong creative ideas.
The post ends with a plain offer: he is available to work with a limited number of ambitious brands.
For brands planning a campaign
For a keynote or advisory brief, this is the post to build a talk around. It names the three arguments Stan Woods actually makes on stage — bland positioning, broken attribution, creativity as leverage — and it shows the offer is direct advice to a small number of brands rather than agency retainer work.
It sets out the brand-versus-performance argument in the most complete form among these posts, including what the author thinks should replace the old playbook.
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Stan Woods argues that years of declining B2B results trace back to marketers trading long-term brand and audience goodwill for short-term lead-generation metrics.
The specific behaviours he names: rushing people into a pipeline because they downloaded an eBook, and 'nurturing' by flooding inboxes with content that ignores the reader's intelligence or buying stage.
He notes that when those tactics produced worse results, marketers doubled down.
His conclusion is to abandon incremental tuning of the old go-to-market playbook, end the brand-versus-performance dichotomy, and treat the change as an opportunity, since brand-driven work requires real vision and creativity.
He points to a blog series and a manifesto behind it, with one link in the comments.
For brands planning a campaign
This is the centrepiece for a talk framed as 'brand versus performance'. It supplies the diagnosis, the two concrete bad practices to call out, and the recommended alternative, so an organiser gets a ready-made argument rather than a topic heading.
This is the practical counterpart to the brand argument: a workbook aimed at CMOs who need to deliver pipeline, not just agree with the thesis.
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Stan Woods announces a workbook built for CMOs under pipeline pressure, following a manifesto arguing that brand is back.
The post is unusually direct about the cost of using it: the workbook is long, and following it requires attention to detail, the right data and the right mindset.
He frames it as an answer to the complaint that the standard B2B go-to-market playbook used by most tech firms is not effective enough.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful if the engagement should leave the audience with something to do afterwards. It shows Stan Woods produces structured, demanding working material for marketing leaders, not just opinion, which suits a workshop or advisory format better than a pure keynote.
It shows the interview format and the peer network around Stan Woods's thinking, including the people he treats as reference points for a new approach.
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Stan Woods describes interviewing Anthony Kennada, founder and CEO of AudiencePlus, a platform for building B2B audiences and pipeline, and calls the approach a discontinuity. The post places this as the third in a series of interviews with industry figures, naming Jon Miller and Idi Ledergor among earlier guests, with links to those conversations.
For brands planning a campaign
Evidence that Stan Woods works in a conversational, interview-led format and can host or moderate a discussion, not only deliver a solo talk. The named guests give a conference programmer a sense of who could be paired with him on a panel.
A short, clear signal of where Stan Woods positions himself in the wider debate about B2B tech branding, and who he reads and endorses.
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Stan Woods recommends an article by Adam Ketterer of Beneath, describing it as a discussion of what the three of them think about the current state of positioning and branding for B2B tech. The post is brief and consists mostly of the recommendation and a link.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful as light supporting evidence that the brand-and-positioning argument is sustained across his network and not a one-off campaign. It carries less weight than the longer posts and should not be the main basis for a booking.
Stan Woods argues that most B2B companies sit in what they call the 'meh zone': buyers do not dislike them, they simply never think about them.
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To make the point concrete, Stan Woods sets out a brand love spectrum, from anti-brands people actively dislike (Ryanair, Virgin Media, Fox News) to cult brands so loved they barely need to market (Apple, Slack), and says the overwhelming majority of B2B firms settle for bland while fighting a bare-knuckle fight for attention.
The diagnosis is not a lack of budget but watered-down ideas: clients say they want ambition or disruption, then let stakeholders dilute the work.
The same argument runs through the post announcing the B2B marketing blog series, which calls for an end to the false dichotomy of brand versus performance and describes the shift to brand-driven, long-term, strategic B2B as creative work you can be proud of.
A spectrum framing that puts a brand's position on a visible scale, backed by close-to-precise figures (97.645% of B2B companies in the 'meh zone') to make invisibility the default state rather than a failure of taste.
For brands planning a campaign
A keynote on this theme gives an audience a way to locate their own brand on the spectrum and a reason to stop treating blandness as a safe option. It suits agency, in-house brand and CMO audiences weighing a long-term brand investment against quarterly lead targets.
Stan Woods's go-to-market argument starts from a diagnosis of what stopped working: leads are not converting as they used to, because marketers sacrificed long-term plays and audience goodwill for short-term lead-gen metrics; the people being marketed to do not want to be rushed into a pipeline because they downloaded an eBook, and nurture sequences flood inboxes with content that does not respect buying stage.
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The post names the 'lead gen gumball machine', where the leads marketing generates are not the leads sales wants, and observes that how customers buy has outrun how most vendors sell. The follow-up post announces a manifesto arguing brand is back, plus a workbook built to help hard-pressed CMOs deliver pipeline, and links that workbook to the same body of thinking.
A manifesto followed by a practical workbook: one document sets the argument, the other gives CMOs a process, data requirements and a mindset to work through it.
Stan Woods does not present the workbook as quick or easy, warning that it is long and needs attention to detail, the right data and the right mindset before it pays off.
For brands planning a campaign
A talk or advisory engagement built around replacing a failing lead-gen playbook with a brand-led one fits teams that can commit to a longer horizon. The explicit warning about effort means the material is better pitched at leaders who control budget and data access than at teams looking for a quick tactic.
Stan Woods argues that a dearth of mojo has plagued B2B for a long time, defining mojo as swagger and confidence that signals 'you must pay attention'.
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Velocity is described as flourishing because it was at heart a creative shop, and the worry raised is that clients so enamoured with AI will ignore the transformative power of creative ideas.
The same post makes a related data point: with critical data spread across many arcane channels, working out ROI has become a bit like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and AI tools threaten to make that worse.
The practical thread is that creativity, not tooling, is what moves a brand toward cult status, where marketing is cheaper and works better.
Uses Velocity's own history as a worked example, pairing a claim about creative culture with the specific commercial result the agency saw.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful for a talk that argues for creative ambition while refusing to treat AI as a substitute for it. Suits agencies and in-house creative teams, and gives an event a counterweight to the usual AI-and-efficiency programming.
Part of the publishing pattern is bringing other voices in: Stan Woods interviewed Anthony Kennada, founder and CEO of AudiencePlus, as the third in a series of interviews that also included Jon Miller and Idi Ledergor, pointing readers to the earlier conversations.
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Another post flags an article by Adam Ketterer of Beneath as a discussion of the current state of positioning and branding for B2B tech, framed as worth a read. In both cases the post is short and the substance sits in the linked piece, positioning Stan Woods as someone who convenes and responds to a peer network rather than only publishing solo argument.
A running interview series plus short commentary posts that direct readers to work by other practitioners.
For brands planning a campaign
A brand could reach the audience through the interview format, either as a featured practitioner or as a sponsor or host partner for a conversation series. The format also fits moderator and interviewer work at events, distinct from a straight keynote booking.
The material reviewed arrives in several shapes: an anniversary essay setting out lessons learned across 25 years, a post pushing readers into a multi-part blog series and a manifesto, a short announcement for a CMO workbook, an interview announcement, and a pointer to another writer's article.
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The recurring structure is a short LinkedIn post that carries one argument and links out to a longer asset; the substance lives in the essays, series, manifesto and workbook rather than in the posts themselves.
For brands planning a campaign
A brand planning around Stan Woods should expect to work with longer-form assets as the core deliverable, with social posts and commentary as the entry point. That makes the fit strongest for campaigns that can host a manifesto, workbook or interview series rather than a single sponsored post.
Stan Woods's retained posts document one ownership relationship and two brand mentions.
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He co-founded the B2B marketing agency Velocity with Doug Kessler and worked there for 25 years before leaving; the posts do not state any ongoing commercial relationship with Velocity.
His other brand connections in the reviewed material are editorial: an interview with the founder of AudiencePlus and a shared recommendation of work by Beneath.
No sponsorship, affiliate, client, or investment relationships are documented in the supplied posts.
Velocity
Owned business
Stan Woods co-founded the B2B marketing agency Velocity with Doug Kessler and says he left the company after 25 years.
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In the post he reflects on what those years taught him about B2B marketing and describes Velocity as 'at heart a creative shop.' The post does not state any continuing commercial relationship with Velocity after his departure.
Stan Woods interviewed Anthony Kennada, founder and CEO of AudiencePlus, a SaaS platform for B2B marketers building audiences and pipeline, as part of a series of interviews with B2B industry figures.
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The post presents the conversation as editorial coverage and states no sponsorship, client, or partnership arrangement.
Stan Woods shared and recommended an article by Adam Ketterer of Beneath on the current state of positioning and branding for B2B tech, describing it as a discussion of what the two of them and a third colleague think about the topic.
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The post is a recommendation only and states no commercial relationship with Beneath.
Stan Woods is a B2B marketing writer and agency founder who argues that most B2B brands are invisible rather than disliked, that the split between brand and performance was a false choice, and that creativity — what he calls mojo — is what makes marketing work.
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Start with the retrospective written on leaving Velocity after 25 years away, where those arguments are laid out directly.
Then read the two posts that introduce a long B2B marketing blog series, a manifesto and a CMO workbook, which is where the practical material lives.
To see how Woods reads the field, follow the interview with AudiencePlus founder Anthony Kennada and the recommendation of Adam Ketterer's article on positioning and branding.
Follow him if you want a sustained case for brand-led B2B marketing and a curator's view of the people making that case.
Both argue that brands should move past describing the product and reach for identity and feeling, and both make the case through a numbered framework followed by concrete commercial reasoning.
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Campbell's five levels — product, solution, lifestyle, feeling, identity — and Woods's love spectrum from anti-brands to cult brands are the same argument about why bland, feature-led marketing fails, taught in the same short-post format with a clear structure readers can carry away.
Campbell writes for e-commerce and direct-to-consumer brands, working through Shopify conversion rates, email and SMS capture, retargeting and paid channels. Woods writes for B2B technology marketers and speaks from 25 years running a B2B agency, so his examples are agency creative culture, lead-generation failures and the brand-versus-performance debate rather than storefront metrics.
Both publish short teaching posts about how B2B relationships and client conversations create lasting value, and both treat the LinkedIn post as an entry point to a structured programme rather than the whole argument.
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Nanigian's point that trust is built through small consistent interactions sits comfortably beside Woods's emphasis on audience goodwill and on clients who water down ambitious work.
Nanigian's subject is customer-success behaviour and sales skills drawn from the Sandler approach — following through, asking instead of assuming, having difficult conversations. Woods's subject is brand strategy and the go-to-market playbook, aimed at marketing leaders rather than at the client-facing skills of a success or sales team.
Both write about B2B marketing content and the place of AI in it, and both insist the technology only matters when people, workflows, governance and creativity are working together.
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Frieder's line that the NFL work is not AI for AI's sake echoes Woods's worry that clients are so enamoured with AI they will ignore creative ideas.
Frieder works at the level of enterprise content supply chains, describing Adobe deployments that scale a single campaign from thousands to hundreds of thousands of assets at the NFL and Best Buy. Woods argues at the level of brand positioning and agency creative culture, with no equivalent focus on production systems or rights management.
The only measured audience figure supplied for Stan Woods is roughly 2,770 LinkedIn followers, observed on 9 October 2026.
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No demographic export, engagement data, or audience survey was provided, so nothing here establishes who those followers are, where they work, or how senior they are.
What the posts do show is the kind of reader his content speaks to: he interviews and cites B2B marketing figures such as Jon Miller, Idi Ledergor, and Anthony Kennada, and writes for people wrestling with brand-versus-performance tradeoffs and lead-generation fatigue.
That points to a specialised professional audience rather than a broad consumer one, but it is evidence of subject matter and content appeal, not measured audience composition.
For a B2B marketing agency weighing Stan Woods for a keynote or advisory engagement, the practical reading is a small, focused following that can suit a room of marketing decision-makers but will not deliver mass reach.
Concrete next step: ask him for recent results on comparable posts plus any audience survey covering job titles, seniority, company size, and geography, since the follower count alone cannot answer a professional-fit question.
The reviewed material does not document a sponsorship or paid-placement offering from Stan Woods.
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What it does show is a services relationship.
In his 5 February 2026 post he says he left Velocity after 25 years and is available to work with what he calls a limited number of ambitious brands that need an injection of mojo, inviting interested companies to get in touch.
That reads as advisory or consulting-style work rather than a media buy, and no deliverables, pricing, scope, booking process, or availability window is stated anywhere in the source material.
The other reviewed posts show writing and interviewing rather than brand partnerships: he describes a blog series and a workbook built around a new B2B go-to-market playbook, and interviews he conducted with Anthony Kennada, Jon Miller, and Idi Ledergor, with a further post recommending an article by Adam Ketterer.
None of that material pairs an outside brand with a commercial format.
No media kit, sponsorship policy, rate card, or partnership inquiry page appears in the reviewed evidence, so no inquiry link is listed here.
This is a documented absence within the reviewed posts, not a finding that Stan Woods never accepts sponsorships; a buyer who needs a paid-placement option should treat that as an open question to confirm directly.
A B2B marketing agency is programming an event for senior marketing leaders and wants Stan Woods for a keynote or advisory engagement built on the brand-versus-performance argument and the new B2B go-to-market playbook.
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Reasons
There is material for more than one format. The retrospective post sets out an argument with three clear movements, and the posts announcing the manifesto and the CMO workbook show Stan Woods produces structured working material, not just opinion. That supports a keynote plus a workshop or advisory follow-on, and the interview series with Anthony Kennada, Jon Miller and Idi Ledergor shows a conversational or moderator format is also within range.
The offer is already explicit. The retrospective post ends by saying Stan Woods is available to work with a limited number of ambitious brands, which matches an advisory brief and tells the agency the engagement model is direct work with a few clients rather than agency retainer work.
The audience is specialised but small. Roughly 2,770 LinkedIn followers were observed on 9 October 2026, and that figure is the only measured audience number supplied. Book this for the argument and the room, not for distribution: no engagement or demographic data was provided, so the agency should not expect the booking to carry a promotional reach component.
Assessment
Strong fit, with the value sitting in expertise rather than reach. The reviewed posts contain three distinct, developed arguments a talk could be built from: the 'meh zone' diagnosis that almost all B2B companies are neither disliked nor thought about, the charge that lead-generation tactics traded long-term brand and audience goodwill for short-term metrics, and the claim that creativity and 'mojo' — not tooling — move a brand toward cult status. These are not loose themes; each comes with named examples and a stated conclusion, which is what an organiser needs to judge whether a speaker can fill a slot with substance.
Constraints
Ask for recent results on comparable posts and any audience survey covering job titles, seniority and company size before promising a promoter anything about reach.
The manifesto, CMO workbook and blog series the posts link to were not supplied with the evidence. Confirm the workbook can be shared with attendees and that it is current before building a workshop around it.
When to choose a specialist
A B2B software vendor wants to buy a sponsored content package: three paid LinkedIn posts promoting a product launch, timed to a webinar, with guaranteed impressions and a demo-booking call to action, and expects the creator's following to feed pipeline.
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Reasons
No sponsorship or paid-placement offering appears in the reviewed posts. The only commercial relationship in view is advisory or consulting work with a limited number of ambitious brands, described in the retrospective post without deliverables, pricing or a booking route. That is a documented absence within the reviewed material, not a finding that Stan Woods never accepts sponsorships — a vendor set on this format should confirm directly rather than assume either way.
The reach component has nothing behind it. The one measured figure is about 2,770 LinkedIn followers observed on 9 October 2026, with no engagement, reach or audience-composition data supplied. Nothing in the evidence can support an impressions guarantee or a claim about who those followers are.
The publishing pattern points away from promotional posts. The reviewed items are short posts carrying one argument that link out to longer assets — an essay, a manifesto, a workbook, an interview series. There is no example of a post written to promote a product, and no media kit or rate card.
The substance of the writing argues against the campaign mechanics. The brand-versus-performance post criticises rushing people into a pipeline because they downloaded an eBook and 'nurturing' them with content that ignores buying stage. A vendor buying eBook-gated funnel content and demo CTAs would be asking Stan Woods to run the tactics the reviewed material says have stopped working.
An impressions-and-pipeline brief also sits badly with the stated terms of the workbook, which is described as long and as requiring attention to detail, the right data and the right mindset. That is a considered engagement, not a fast launch tactic.
Assessment
Poor fit on the evidence reviewed. This brief assumes an advertising arrangement that the available material does not document, and it asks for the kind of short promotional post Stan Woods does not appear to publish. It also asks for outcomes the supplied evidence cannot support.
A worked campaign example
Angle
Open on the uncomfortable default rather than on a case study: most B2B companies are neither disliked nor thought about, so the problem is invisibility, not bad taste. Then diagnose why the standard playbook stopped producing, and close on creativity as the leverage that is hardest to copy. The argument is deliberately ordered so the audience feels the problem before being offered the alternative.
Brief
The keynote and advisory engagement above, for a room of B2B marketing leaders weighing long-term brand investment against quarterly pipeline targets.
Format and follow on
Thirty to forty minutes keynote, followed by an optional half-day workshop built on the workbook. The workbook is the reason to book the workshop rather than the talk alone, so confirm with Stan Woods that it can be shared with attendees.
If the programme wants a second session, the interview series with Anthony Kennada, Jon Miller and Idi Ledergor supports a moderated panel or fireside, which suits an event that would rather not run two straight keynotes.
Open questions
The manifesto, workbook and blog series were not supplied with the evidence, so their contents cannot be described or checked against the talk.
Publication dates are missing for three of the five reviewed posts, so the currency of the arguments beyond the dated pieces is unconfirmed.
No engagement or audience-composition data was supplied, so the agency should treat any claim about the room's prior familiarity with Stan Woods as unverified.
Structure
Beat
The meh zone
Detail
Place brands on the love spectrum laid out in the retrospective post — anti-brands people actively dislike, cult brands that barely need to market, and the very large middle where prospects never think about the company at all. Use the claimed 97.645% figure to make blandness the default, then make the point that invisibility is a choice, not a budget constraint, because clients who say they want disruption let stakeholders water the work down.
Beat
The lead-generation gumball machine
Detail
Walk through what stopped working: leads that do not convert, buyers rushed into a pipeline because they downloaded an eBook, and inbox nurture that ignores buying stage. Name the split between the leads marketing produces and the leads sales wants, and the observation that how customers buy has outrun how most vendors sell. End this beat on the warning that working out ROI across scattered channels now resembles Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and that adding AI tools makes it worse rather than better.
Beat
Creativity and mojo as the leverage
Detail
Define mojo as swagger and confidence that signals 'you must pay attention', and use Velocity's own history as the worked example — a creative shop that flourished because creativity was central. Make the counter-argument to the room's likely AI agenda: tooling does not move a brand toward cult status, and the warning in the post is that clients so taken with AI will ignore strong creative ideas.
Beat
What to do next
Detail
Hand over the practical counterpart: the manifesto arguing brand is back and the CMO workbook built for pipeline pressure. Be straight that the workbook is long and needs the right data and mindset. Close with the advisory offer — direct work with a limited number of brands.
Why it works
Every beat is drawn from a documented argument rather than a topic heading, so the organiser can judge the content before booking.
It gives the audience something to act on afterwards, and it gives the agency a natural advisory or workshop upsell that matches how Stan Woods already works.
It is built to stand against the usual AI-and-efficiency programming, which is a defensible reason to put it on the agenda.
Working title
Escaping the meh zone: why brand beats performance in B2B go-to-market
Choose Kurt Campbell over Stan Woods when the room is e-commerce or direct-to-consumer operators rather than B2B software marketers, and when the session has to end with a message framework and acquisition arithmetic the audience can apply in the same week.
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The two reviewed posts do two useful things in sequence.
One lays out a ladder of what a brand is really selling — product, solution, lifestyle, feeling, identity — with named examples at each level and an instruction to go deeper than the product.
The other works through practical numbers: a 3% Shopify conversion rate means 97 of every 100 visitors do not buy, that rate still puts a store in the top fifth on the platform, and the response should be retention systems plus more traffic rather than chasing a better percentage.
A programme built around 'what do we say, and what do we do with the attention we already have' gets more from this than from a brand-versus-performance argument aimed at B2B buying committees.
The tradeoff is subject matter, not quality.
The reviewed material is consumer and e-commerce: widgets, shampoo, leggings, sneakers, Shopify stores and paid social.
Stan Woods's argument is about B2B lead-generation pipelines, sales and marketing disagreeing over what a lead is, and long-term brand investment against quarterly targets.
Nothing in the reviewed Kurt Campbell posts addresses B2B buying committees or the lead-gen gumball machine, so an agency programming for senior B2B marketing leaders would get tactics aimed at consumer purchase decisions.
No keynote, workshop or advisory offer appears in the reviewed posts either, so an event organiser would need to confirm availability directly before treating this as a comparable booking.
Choose Greg Nanigian over Stan Woods when the brief is retention and customer success rather than brand strategy and acquisition — for example an audience of customer success managers, account managers or client-facing teams, or a workshop on handling difficult client conversations.
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The reviewed posts make a small number of concrete points and stay on them: trust is built in small interactions rather than one gesture, follow-through and asking questions instead of making assumptions do the work, issues should be addressed directly, and clarity is the professional's responsibility rather than the client's.
That last point, together with the question of whether people avoid hard conversations because they are afraid of the answer, is the kind of material a facilitator can turn into a working session on how a team shows up with clients.
Both posts carry dates in the supplied record, September 2026, so the framing is current.
The reviewed posts sit close to promotional copy for a named training series, each closing with a call to learn more, and neither develops an independent argument about brand versus performance.
The same buyer decision — whether senior B2B marketing leaders should shift spend from short-term pipeline tactics toward long-term brand — is answered from a different angle here, and it is a different question.
Retention and relationship skills help a team keep the accounts it wins; they do not give a room a position on how to win attention in the first place.
No keynote or advisory format is documented in the reviewed material, and an organiser would be asking this person to speak outside the subject their posts show them in.
Choose Stephen Frieder over Stan Woods when the audience wants enterprise content-operations case studies and practical AI governance rather than a strategic brand argument — a content operations, creative operations or marketing technology audience, or a programme where leaders need to see production scale before they will fund a change.
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The reviewed posts describe two concrete programmes.
One covers an American football league working on an AI-assisted content supply chain, where a single campaign can grow from about 6,000 assets to more than 89,000 across 15 languages and over 356,000 when adapted across experiences, with weeks of work reduced to hours.
The other covers a large retailer serving more than 200 million customers building an AI-ready content supply chain to create, govern, reuse and activate approved content faster.
Both name the ingredients that make the change work: connected systems, strong metadata, governance, rights management and creative control.
For a room weighing a content platform investment, that is closer to the decision in front of them than a talk about brand and performance.
These are accounts of programmes run by other organisations using a named vendor's technology, not a developed personal argument.
There is no brand-versus-performance thesis, no view on lead generation or buying committees, and no commercial offer or speaking format documented in the reviewed posts.
A keynote built from them gives the room examples to copy but not a position to argue with, and the strategic question the agency is programming — whether to hold the line on long-term brand work under pipeline pressure — would go unanswered.
An organiser should also confirm that the vendor case material can be presented and is current before building a session on it.
Reviewed five LinkedIn posts by Stan Woods as full retained text: the retrospective written on leaving Velocity after 25 years, two posts about a B2B marketing blog series, a manifesto and a CMO workbook, an interview with AudiencePlus founder Anthony Kennada, and a recommendation of Adam Ketterer's article on positioning and branding.
The retained originals do not carry dates for all five posts, so the set is treated as a selection rather than a complete chronology.
The longer assets the posts link to—the blog series, manifesto, workbook, and interview write-ups—were not supplied, so only what the posts say about them is reflected here.
The observed LinkedIn follower count is about 2,770 on 9 October 2026; no engagement, reach, or audience-composition data was supplied.
Similar-creator context uses comparator posts by Kurt Campbell, Greg Nanigian, and Stephen Frieder.
Recent engagement
Across their last 7 LinkedIn posts, the median post got 35 reactions and 1 comments. Checked 2026-11-02.
