Thought leadership - strategic brand rocket

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Thought leadership is a grossly misused phrase -

People use it liberally without much thought to its meaning let alone its strategic context.

Hopefully in some small way over time, I and the many other people who advocate and write about thought leadership can deliver to CEOs, PR practioners, marketing and brand professionals and other interested parties, a better understanding of the tremendous power of thought leadership if used strategically. Properly used and applied, thought leadership has the ability to turbo-charge personal profiles and brands so that they stand out from the competition.

It’s my view that while thought leadership for brands/companies is more challenging than building a thought leadership position for an individual, it can and has been done very successfully by many companies.

The challenge for companies to be thought leaders

Why do I say it is more challenging for a company to be a thought leader? For a number of reasons.

First, the best thought leaders share information with an abundance mentality. Most companies aren’t into sharing information, alternatively if they do share it is usually information that has been sanitised and filtered to a bland paste through committees, sub-committees, legal compliance, brand managers, etc.

Second, the best thought leaders engage with and listen to their audiences in order to understand their needs. They’re in tune with their audience and are constantly seeking feedback and adapting what they deliver based on this feedback. They are interested in adding value to their customers lives beyond merely selling them a product or a service.

Unfortunately most companies are still stuck in the old media mentality of choosing your medium and then delivering a much massaged or creatively enhanced message to its audience through that medium. That’s the way it’s always been done and it’s worked.

Thought leaders research and listen to their audience

So why should we change? Why should companies engage with its audience rather than continue delivering messages to them? After all we conduct research, that’s listening, that’s engaging isn’t it?

Yes and no. Research is a very effective way of listening to an audience but is it two way engagement? Not really.

And herein lies the rub. Social media and Web 2.0 has changed the way not only how companies communicate with their customers but more importantly the way customers want to and expect to communicate with the company and how they find out about a company’s brand and what the social media community out there are saying about that brand.

It is no longer good enough to merely sell products or services the way you always did. There is a growing percentage of customers who want more from the company from which they buy. Questions are being asked about what the company does in the community, how it recycles, how it sources and processes it raw materials and what impact it has on the environment.

This is even being felt at at B2B level where suppliers in turn are being asked to tick the procurement box on a number of issues such as employment and environment practices, health and safety, corporate social responsbility, product sourcing practices and the like.

Tap the rich vein of thought leadership ideas

This is where the rich vein of thought leadership opportunity rests for companies. It is the companies who engage with their customers, suppliers and the communities within which they operate, who get to the bottom of the issues that are important to these audiences.

It’s at this point that they are able to align the delivery of a thought leadership platform relevant to the issues that are important to the very people it is trying to influence, whether that be government, consumers, regulatory bodies, the sector in which they operate or their own staff.

In my mind the best, long term thought leadership examples are tied very closely to the company’s core values but that is an entire topic on its own which I will address in another posting.

I’ve talked about listening and engaging with an audience throughout this post and so I look forward to any views you may have on the topic.

Also if you have any thought leadership case studies which you know of or you’ve been involved let me know - who knows they may appear in my next book: Great thought leadership case studies from around the world – How leading brands are getting ahead.