Publishing alone will not help your thought leadership

Dale Bryce, the head of capability marketing at Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM) contacted me about my post on content aggregation and I felt that his response was worth sharing here rather than losing in the comments section.  SKM is a global engineering services firm that I have covered in a previous post as an excellent case study on thought leadership.

Their client first thought leadership stance has worked and continues to work for them and I think Dale is well placed to comment on this issue.  He had this to say:

 “Craig! I agree, content doesn’t a thought leader make.

“The right content might be king, but for the most part I think the key issue can be described by paraphrasing words from Bill Clinton’s first presidential election campaign: “It’s the client relationship stupid”.

“You rightly highlight value as being key to thought leadership. After 20 years in professional services marketing, I have come to know that value comes from insights that can actually solve client problems. But I have also learned that it is also not quite that simple, and I agree “Publishing alone will not help”.

Great content needs to be integrated into your client relationship strategy

“At Sinclair Knight Merz our own client survey data tells us that the bulk of client satisfaction is determined by relationship factors – understanding a client’s business, staying in touch between projects and bringing valuable ideas forward. Knowing this has actually reframed the purpose of our thought leadership content.

“Great content can serve to build brand awareness and relevance. But it can do more than that if properly integrated into a client relationship strategy. In professional services, projects and deals are becoming larger in scope and scale, and more urgent with increased accountability for delivery. In an increasingly complex world, clients have bigger, thornier problems that need to be resolved. Thought leadership clearly has a role to play in proactively bringing valuable ideas forward.

 Thought leadership is a conversation

 “To do this well you need a deep understanding of a client’s business. So, for me thought leadership is more than brand building and positioning, it is a client conversation starter.  And the best conversations are two-way. Content can get you to the table, but the length of your stay at that table is more often a function of how much you listen, than what you yourself have to say.

“The key question then is not did your phone ring when you sent out that great piece of thought leadership (even though it might). The question becomes, did you pick up the phone and make that call yourself after you sent out that great piece of thought leadership? Did you really want to start a two-way dialogue with your client?”

Does product, sales or market leadership equal thought leadership?

There are divergent views about whether product, sales or market leadership equal thought leadership.

I don’t think they do.  That said, there is no doubt that you are at a massive advantage if you own any of these spaces in your market.  If you do it sets you up perfectly to take a thought leadership position to market.

In a paper by the Content Factor entitled ‘Is Anybody Following your Thought Leadership?’, Richard Currier is quoted describing the three stages of corporate leadership as:

1.       Product leadership

2.       Sales leadership

3.       Marketing leadership

But I have bad news, none of these on their own or even combined equate to thought leadership.

Why?  Because being a thought leader means sharing your ideas, your IP, your insights with the market so that you become the go to company in that market.  It is one thing to lead in terms of product, pricing, service and delivery but quite another to lead the market in terms of ideas, thoughts and insights.  In fact to many companies sharing this sort of information is an anathema to them.

I agree with Currier that market leadership is the only long lasting advantage.  Thought leadership should be viewed as a way to turbo-charge this advantage thus further embedding the company at the top of its sector and owning an even stronger share mind among its publics.

Implemented well, good thought leadership can add enormous value to helping build a brand.  It cements trust and loyalty in your brand by adding something of value to your clients or broader publics that goes well beyond selling them a product or service.  It shows them that you have a deep understanding of the issues or challenges facing their business and their everyday lives and that you have the people and the expertise to deliver not only the insights but the solutions to address these.

Seth Godin talks about 'shipping' your ideas. That's what thought leaders do.

There is a very strong parallel between what Godin says and thought leadership and also a very nice play on the words if you look carefully.  Thought leaders ‘ship’ – they ‘ship’ their ideas for all to see and in the process they become indispensible to their publics.

Building pre-eminence in your niche and being viewed as indispensible is the ultimate accolade for a thought leader.  It  should also be the ultimate thought leadership objective for your brand and its position in the market.

What do you think?

Beware, content doesn’t a thought leader make

There is a lot of a commentary flying around the web at the moment about content, optimising that content for search engines , content curation (filtering and aggregating relevant content) and how best to deliver content to your publics.

But…and this is a big but – content alone does not make you a thought leader.  It may help a company’s publics, it may make their lives easier, it may drive traffic to a site and it may position that brand as a trusted source of particular information.  But does it make that company a thought leader?

No it does not.

Let’s have a quick look at my definition of thought leadership:  Thought Leadership is establishing a relationship with and delivering something of value to your stakeholders and customers that aligns with your brand/company value. In the process you go well beyond merely selling a product or service and establish your brand /company as the expert in that field and differentiate yourself from your competitors

Key to thought leadership is innovative content

The key to being a thought leader is offering something of value, insights that position you as the expert in that field.  By that I mean stuff which frames the debate and conversations on a particular issue or issues.  Content that challenges the paradigms and the thinking of your own staff as well as your publics if not an entire industry sector, and content that delivers deep insights around a particular issue or sector.

Content that doesn’t do this cannot and should not be labelled as thought leadership.  It is merely information.

This is not to say that it’s not useful but it doesn’t make you a thought leader.

Content curation

HiveFire has produced a thought provoking e book on content curation.  You can download it here : http://info.hivefire.com/eBook.html  and I suggest you do.  It is a good read and raises some very interesting questions about how you manage your content.

But as they say, competitors are drowning in a sea of information overload and they are challenged to decipher what information is relevant and which sources are trustworthy.  My view is that it is particularly because of this that to be a thought leader, the content you deliver needs to differentiate you from the crowd, must be different and challenge insights and should position you as the pre-eminent company/commentator in that space.

The spin-offs of doing this right are huge as many marketers, particularly in the professional services arena will attest.  True thought leadership is one of the most valuable marketing assets in which a company can invest.  It inspires trust in your brand and in process imbues in your company and your people a perception by the marketplace that you are the ‘go to’ authorities and knowledge experts on that topic - a perception that no amount of advertising can buy.  OK maybe a bucket load could buy it but it would cost a bomb .

Publishing alone will not help

Publishing on its own is not going to help.  It’s what you publish and how you take it to market that makes the difference.

Before you become an aggregator or curator of content ask yourself the following questions:   What is our thought leadership position?  What do we stand for in the market place?  What is our differentiator in terms of leading the market?

Only once you have established a position in this regard are seen as the go to place for insights in your area of specialty is it useful to become a content curator and specifically for content that relates to and helps inform that position.

 Until then I’m afraid, you will just be a follower.

Dove thought leadership campaign values at odds with sister brand?

I have stated in my book and on this blog that I think Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty is one of the quintessential examples of thought leadership.  But recently I have had two interesting comments on this blog asking how Unilever (owner of the Dove brand) can purport to be a thought leader in one brand if there is a clear clash of values between the Dove campaign and another Unilever product campaign, Axe deodorant.  

The Campaign for Real Beauty is all about finding a broader, healthier more democratic view of beauty while on the Axe campaign stereotypes women - it shows a man putting on the deodorant and then having to flee and fight off thousands of beautiful, scantily clad women.

I have to say that at face value the two campaigns are at the opposite end of the beauty value spectrum.

The first person to raise this issue on my blog was Kym Kettler.  Kym had this to say: “One of the challenges that Unilever faces in Europe about the authenticity of its Real Beauty campaign is its Axe Deodorant campaign. Can a thought leader be a thought leader when it projects conflicting personas to different audiences? Doesn’t this undermine the credibility and trust needed for true thought leadership?”

Another reader, Sughanda replied: “Kym is right. Unilever tells women “You are beautiful even if you are fat” on the one hand, and tells men “Use our products if you want to be surrounded by really beautiful, skinny, sexy babes.  Hypocritical, isn’t it?”

I think they both have a point but I would be interested in your views.

My view is that a true thought leadership position should be closely aligned with the values of company and if a brand’s values are at odds with the company’s values there is a value gap.

So what you might say.  Shouldn’t brands stand and live on their own?

This was certainly true over the past few decades but times have changed and more importantly consumers have changed.  Consumers these days are demanding more from their brands when it comes to things like corporate social responsibility, the environment and a brand’s contribution to society.

Given this change, I think Unilever may well have a problem.

If a multinational’s brands are going to be at odds with the values espoused by the overarching brand then it only makes sense that they will need to review their brand positioning and align it more closely with the mothership.

Is Axe at odds with the mothership?  I don’t know, you tell me.

Is the Axe campaign at odds with the thought leadership stance of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.  I think it is.

The question is what do you think?       

Why companies struggle with thought leadership and individuals flourish

If I asked you to think of three thought leaders, who springs to mind?  For me it is inevitably a handful of individuals as opposed to brands or companies. Even if I think of the question with my corporate hat on I come up with the individual’s names who represent those companies – Richard Branson, Mohammed Yunus, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Anita Roddick, etc.

 
Why do companies battle and individuals flourish when it comes to thought leadership?

 
Perhaps the answer lies in research conducted by Bliss PR in June this year www.blisspr.com/. The study entitled Social Media Landscape for Consulting Firms analysed 46 management consulting firms and found that not only did most of them make it challenging for clients and prospects to identify and directly engage their thought leaders via social media but most didn’t actively champion their thought leaders.

 
Furthermore the study found that 30% of them failed to clearly identify any thought leaders at all.

 
I believe this issue is the result of three corporate afflictions and an extra cultural dimension peculiar to the Australian market:
1. Unless you are the founder (Branson, Gates, Yunus, Buffett and Roddick) companies are loathe to invest time and effort in a thought leader champion because of the risks i.e. he or she leaves to set up on their own, they become a target for the competitors, etc
2. Companies are also wary of the making the individual bigger than the brand
3. Unless it is the CEO or managing director politics means it could be corporate suicide to develop a higher media profile than them
4. Finally, and this is the one peculiar only to the Australian market, you have to deal with the ‘tall poppy’ syndrome. Simply put this means that people are loathe to develop too large a profile for fear of being cut down to size by those around you - hey every culture has its peculiarities.

On the flip side individuals are more inclined to become thought leaders for the following reasons:
1. They are often hungrier than the large corporations
2. They keenly understand the need to differentiate themselves from their competitors
3. Many of them are already experts in some area of their field
4. They are more open to engaging with and sharing insights and information with their audiences
5. They are personally close to their customers or consumers - no customer care department here, they are the customer care department
6. They are normally passionate about what they do
7. They are prepared to take risks
8. They are courageous – after all they did start their own business.

Big business continues to grapple with how they can own a space and connect with their audiences in an authentic way. A way in which they truly share information and insights with their customers over and above the typical product or service pushes on which most campaigns predictably focus.

 
I take my hat off to those brave companies who have taken the plunge – they have and are still reaping the rewards. I say brave because someone has to make the decision to break the mould. Someone has stand up and say we are going to do things differently around here. It takes courage to do that.

 
Finally, I leave you with this thought. The McKinsey Quarterly Report of June 2009   http://tiny.cc/p21vQ  entitled Building corporate reputations says that that organisations will need to enhance their listening skills and reinvigorate their understanding of and relationships with critical stakeholders and go beyond traditional PR to successfully activate a network of supporters.

It is precisely for this reason that companies need to focus their efforts on powerful, long-term, values-led thought leadership campaigns.

Does one quick campaign = true thought leadership?

The Dove Real Beauty campaign classic long-term thought leadership - no quick fixes here

There are two types of thought leadership and I’m not sure that the one even deserves the description.

The first is what I term quick-fix or short-term thought leadership and is often confused with true thought leadership. This is the great creative idea or innovation that is relevant only to one campaign or product and it here today gone tomorrow.

It is an idea that has no longevity beyond that particular campaign and while it may set your brand apart from the others for a moment in time it doesn’t necessarily make you a thought leader.

Advertising and short-term PR campaigns are good at achieving this and you see these campaigns all the time.  Some are good and some…well let’s just say that thought leadership is probably way too generous a term to apply to these campaigns.

I stand to be corrected but my view is that true thought leadership should be a far broader, longer-term positioning for a company or its brands.

True thought leadership is about attaching an authentic value to your brand or company which validates the image, preference, influence, reputation or brand-purchasing decision because it links in some way to the issues which are important to your consumers’ everyday lives. These could be as wide ranging as education, social issues, philanthropy, social responsibility, environment, health and infrastructure.

It is about delivering to these customers a value, information or point of view which says to them: “These guys get me, they get the environment and they get the social factors important to my life. I feel good in making this purchase, I feel good about this brand.  I trust this brand.”

If a customer inherently feels these attributes in a brand it not only develops brand loyalty but it also generates excellent word-of-mouth.

To do this I believe takes time. 

Quick fix rules

Unfortunately we live in a corporate world dominated by what I term ‘quarterlyitis’. 

This is a world dominated by quick turnaround projects, quick fix solutions and immediate results.  Not only are listed companies afflicted by this in terms of their reporting and the scrutiny of analysts but marketing teams and PR teams suffer the same pressure.

This often results in what many may claim to be thought leadership campaigns but which in reality are merely one-off, innovative PR tactics that may or may not fall under a broader communications strategy.

I’m sorry but I think thought leadership is a whole heap more.  It’s strategic in its nature and builds the reputation of your organization or your brand as a thought leader over time.

Is thought leadership really useless jargon?

My apologies for not posting anything for some weeks but I’m just back from a wonderful trip to South Africa after emigrating to Australia six years ago.   

I took a decision not to take my Blackberry, not to look at e mails, not to twitter and not to blog.  Pretty radical for someone who can never put his Blackberry down but I highly recommend it - it’s quite liberating.

Before I left, a work contact of mine, Glen Frost, who is rapidly emerging as a thought leader in his own right in the PR and Marketing conferencing world in Australia  www.frocomm.com/  alerted me to an article in Media Asia http://www.media.asia/ wherein David Wolf the CEO of Wolf Group Asia http://www.wolfgroupasia.com/  says that thought leadership should be declared useless jargon.  I attach a pdf of the article here - unfortunately you have to subscribe to Media Asia and cannot view the article online.

Well David’s article certainly raised the hackles for someone as passionate about the subject of thought leadership as I am.  Before I share with you my response to David’s article I would first like to say that I think it’s fantastic that people like David are even bothering to talk about thought leadership - it means it is a term and a practice that is well and truly alive albeit not always in a form that is palatable for people like David.

Why thought leadership should not be declared ‘useless jargon’ 

In his September issue article ‘Thought leadership should be declared useless jargon’, David Wolf raises some excellent points but fluffs his main line.  Just because people misuse the term Public Relations or Advertising doesn’t mean we should turn them into nebulous descriptors like: “How we help companies build their brand and engage with their stakeholders.”

In the same way nor should we dump the term thought leadership for David’s generic label:  “…help our companies and clients lead an industry agenda and deliver genuine insights”.

The fact that David has written about thought leadership is a good sign – it means it has traction, the industry is taking note.  I know a lot of clients are crying out for it.

But sadly David is right, it is often misused.  That, however, doesn’t mean you should suddenly declare it useless jargon.

A more constructive approach would be for the marketing industry to educate ourselves and our clients about the true meaning and value of thought leadership, how one can identify or best package the company’s IP or point-of-view and in the process add real value to the company’s stakeholders.

By taking the high road, recognising what true thought leadership is really about and applying tighter discipline and rigour around the term and its processes we can allow it to take its rightful place in the marketing mix.

There are too many great thought leadership campaigns out there for it to be dismissed so easily.