Posts Tagged ‘Taking thought leadership to market’

Dove’s thought leadership platform changes face of advertising

Dove's FB campaign shows how thought leadership can drive innovation across a variety of platforms

Despite the obvious benefits, the beauty of a great thought leadership campaign is the spin off it can create for that person or the brand.

Take Dove for example.  Their Campaign for Real Beauty is one of the best examples of a consumer thought leadership campaign I
have seen (see the case study I wrote up about it here).  It has spawned a content-rich environment for them around this topic to such a degree that they pretty much ‘own’ the discussions around real beauty.

Dove displays innovation driven by their thought leadership position

Their next move announced this week is brilliant – a ‘Dove ad makeover’ Facebook app, which allows Facebook users to displace existing advertising messages on their pages with positive ads from Dove.

This is great innovation driven by a thought leadership position on real beauty.

Check this brief You Tube clip out to get the idea http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhI3Wzs2gJA&feature=player_embedded

I’d be interested in your thoughts.

 I’m a director at Sydney-based, Cannings Corporate Communications.  Please check out my book: Brand Stand: seven steps
to thought leadership,  follow me on twitter @thoughtstrategy or join me on LinkedIn.

Booz & Co share their thought leadership insights

Barry Jaruzelski from Booz & Co shares his insights on their thought leadership program

The Economist called the Global Innovation 1000 “the most comprehensive assessment of the relationship between R&D investment and corporate performance,” and
Tom Peters praised it as a “provocative, research-based article that is
sure to get you thinking.”

I have long been an admirer of Booz&Co’s thought leadership work around their Innovation 1000 project.  For two years they were voted as generating the best thought leadership across all professional services firms according to Source for Consulting.

So I took the liberty of approaching Barry Jaruzelski who heads up the program to ask him a few questions about it.  This is what he had to say:

1. First off could you give a brief overview of Booz & Company’s Innovation thought leadership campaign?

Every year since 2005, Booz & Company has conducted the Global Innovation 1000 study, which investigates the relationship between how much companies invest in R&D and their overall financial performance — and every year, we reinforce the core conclusion that there is no statistically significant correlation between the two.

The study examines the R&D spending of the 1,000 largest public companies and also explores a particular “deep dive” topic on innovation.  The Innovation 1000 study serves as an umbrella for a range of other viewpoints, articles, and conference and
university speaking engagements on innovation.

We release the results in October of each year to the public via a press release, targeted media outreach and distribution to our client community.   In addition, at launch we conduct a series of webinars for our firm’s alumni, study participants, and clients.

2. Please explain the business rationale behind Booz & Company’s focus on a thought leadership platform
and why Innovation was chosen as a topic?

As a firm, we have had a 60 plus year commitment to consulting on innovation, starting with a seminal article in 1950 in the Harvard Business Review which defined the concept of the Product Life Cycle for the first time.  We conduct a wide variety of engagements and research on product development process improvement, R&D strategy, engineering effectiveness, and innovation organization for a broad range of clients.

Innovation is one of the eight core functional client service areas that we offer across our full range of industry groups.  The Innovation 1000 study is a conversation starter with senior executives and serves as an umbrella for a wide range of intellectual capital on various aspects of innovation.

This study is important because it both builds our profile and builds our knowledge bank.

3. What business objectives did you/do you put in place, how do you measure them and how is your thought leadership campaign delivering on these?

In broad terms, we expect this study to achieve the following objectives:

1)  Place Booz & Company in top tier business media worldwide  as a leader in innovation thinking and research.  In order to
evaluate our campaign we track media coverage , social media mentions, traffic to booz.com and strategy-business.com .
The study is cited each year in nearly 200 publications around the globe, spanning 27 countries.

2)  Provide an effective vehicle to interest and engage clients and prospective clients. This is more difficult to track and measure, but we try to track the interest, leads and sales we generate that are directly and/or indirectly related to Innovation 1000.

3)  Help secure  speaking engagements –  We track this in comparison to targets and the number of speaking engagements in prior years.

4. How do you ensure audience relevance in what you are publishing / researching?

Each year, we begin with a set of “candidate” subject focus areas which are discussed among a diverse set of partners and principals from various practice groups. The subject areas are debated for macro relevance, interest among clients and
overall feasibility.  Every year we also discuss potential topics with clients and invite them to participate in the research via interviews on the “deep dive” topic.

5. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in your thought leadership over the past few years?

We now spend much more time translating each piece of thought leadership into multiple formats to reach a wider variety of audiences more effectively.  This includes translating our ideas into multi-media, social media and media-friendly formats.

There is such a barrage of information that our clients and audiences face that we have to work harder to stand out, attract attention and ensure our “big ideas” get heard. As well, while we still generate an incredibly extensive amount of IC, we are even more strategic about our focus areas and resource allocation. What hasn’t changed is our focus on thought leadership as a critical area of differentiation for our firm. The company White Space actually tracks the intellectual capital efforts of the consulting
industry and it has has rated Booz & Company #1 in Thought Leadership for the past two consecutive years. This is an honor we are extremely proud to achieve.

6. What have been some of the spinoffs of your focus on innovation?  These could be internal (within Booz & Company) or external.

We have received invitations to write bylined or guest articles in other publications and to join advisory boards of clients and innovation-related associations (e.g. PDMA)

7. Given your experience, what are some of the tips you can share in terms of arriving at and getting a thought
leadership program off the ground?

Build a smart and strong team that is consistently committed to “putting in the work” over a number of years to build name recognition and profile.

Ensure that certain elements of your program are repeatable so you can scale and build success that you can recreate annually.  And perhaps most importantly, do not over reach and create a program that collapses under its own weight after just one year
because it is too ambitious and demanding to sustain.

Take the long view and build something that is sustainable and focused on quality.

8. What have been the top three outcomes of Booz & Company’s thought leadership campaign?

1)  Top Tier media coverage globally, client interest and engagements

2)  Building a strong brand as a firm with proven expertise in innovation (from ideation to process to execution and everything in between)

3) Being ranked as one of the top firms in innovation consulting

The top thought leadership tips for communicators

If you are a communicator, work in public relations, marketing or communications you are bound to have heard of or are deeply involved in thought leadership marketing.

Some people groan at the mention of the word probably because every opinion is labelled thought leadership.  But if used strategically, it is one of the most powerful communication tools available to marketers.  Like any marketing discipline, however, there are some things that work and others that don’t.

Through years of exploring, writing, speaking and consulting about thought leadership, this is what I have gleaned from thought leaders themselves or individuals who are responsible for multi-faceted local and global thought leadership campaigns.

I have distilled these learnings into six points.

Client centric - Experienced thought leaders will tell you to make sure your content is first and foremost client centric and that it delivers new and relevant insights.  Product-speak and brand centricity is the death knell of thought leadership.

Short content is good - People no longer want long reports.  They want executive summaries highlighting the key points pertinent to them.  Infograms are a great way to present information – it’s easy to digest and delivers your point of view in a visual story board.

Re-use and re-purpose content - A lot of work, resource, time and effort go into producing your material.  Make sure you are leveraging it every way possible i.e. if it is research or a report, ask if it can it be segmented into mini-sector reports or key topic areas and release it over time.

Also think about if and how you can news-jack.  This involves looking for opportunities in the daily media into which you can inject your point of view.  Relevance is obviously key.

Start small, think big, think new, adapt quickly - Don’t start off with a massive production,  you are probably biting off more than you can chew.  Find something on which you can act nimbly, something relevant to the challenges facing your target audience and then deliver some new insights on these challenges.

Ideally it should be a long-term play.  The best thought leadership I have seen has run for five years or longer and has been adapted to change with the times.

Make it part of the business culture - If it is not owned from the CEO through to marketing and sales it is not going to gain the traction you want.  True thought leadership is about empowering the business and all of those in it.

It is the sharpest tool in building eminence - Those who are using it well all agree that is the best tool for building eminence for their brand and it is the best brand differentiator they have.  Critically it enables you to have conversations and to engage with your audience in a way your competitors cannot.

In the process you build that all important characteristic – trust.

Craig Badings is a director at Sydney-based, Cannings Corporate Communications.  He is the author of “Brand Stand:
seven steps to thought leadership” You can follow him on twitter @thoughtstrategy or join him on LinkedIn.

12 experts on the key thought leadership trends for 2012 – content curation

The overwhelming sense from these experts is that content curation alone does not lead to thought leadership

I asked 12 people who I consider to be leading global commentators on thought leadership as well as a couple who have produced some amazing thought leadership programs in-house over the years to comment on four critical thought leadership questions for 2012.

Inspired by their answers I couldn’t help chipping in with my own thoughts.

As a result of the overwhelmingly positive response, I have split the interviews into four different posts – one post per question.

In the New Year I will make available an e book containing all the answers.

Interviewees include: Bob Buday, Erica Klein, David Meerman Scott, Jeff Ernst, Rob Leavitt, Britton Manasco, Dana van den Heuvel, Matt Church, Fiona Czerniawska, Dale Bryce, Elizabeth Sosnow, Marte Semb Aaasmundsen and me.

This is the last post in the series and it covers their answers to question four:

Question four: Can content curation alone turn an individual or company
into a thought leader?

Bob Buday, president of Bloom Group LLC, a firm that helps professional services and other B2B companies gain market leadership through thought leadership (http://www.bloomgroup.com)

“No – especially if all you do is collect articles. There are tons of automated ways to do it without a human intermediary – Twitter feeds, Google alerts, etc.

“At the very least, content curators need to provide more value to readers than simply identifying and collecting content on a topic. They need to explain why some piece of content is worth someone’s time – what new light it sheds.

“Yet still, even if you add that kind of value – providing commentary on interesting content – playing the role of content curator doesn’t go far enough to demonstrate that you are a leading expert on a topic.

“All to say there are no short cuts in becoming a thought leader.”

Erica Klein, Thought Leadership Writer and Strategist Specializing in Financial and Technology Companies(http://www.ThoughtLeadershipWriter.com)

“This may be totally self-serving on my part, but I think aggregating content marks a company as a “me too” provider and not a distinctive brand able to offer prospects and customers real, quantifiable value.

“True thought leadership can do so much more for a company than round up content at the OK Corral!”

Matt Church, founder of the Global Thought Leaders Movement and creator of the Million Dollar Expert Program. He is the author of 5 books including Thought Leaders and his latest Sell Your Thoughts (http://www.mattchurch.com)

“In the next 36 months maybe.  But after that those who synthesise, aggregate and curate Thought Leadership will lose position. It’s about extending the conversations or contradicting them. This means you have to go beyond ‘here is a good idea’ and start to say ‘here is what I think about X idea’.

“It’s about contribution and contradiction as ways of extending an idea.  A reader reads a book and goes ‘cool’, a curator reads an idea and goes ‘how can I share that?’ a Thought Leader reads an idea and goes ‘What do I think about that?’

Elizabeth Sosnow, managing director of Bliss PR a business-to-business strategic public relations and marketing communications firm based in New York City (http://www.blisspr.com)

“I love this question – it’s one I’ve debated myself.  I think the short answer is “yes,” but the long answer is “no.”

“In the short term, curation is a way to signal to your audience that you understand industry trends and “what’s ahead.”  However, longer term, curation signals a “me, too” marketing posture.

“True thought leadership requires differentiation to succeed, so curation just isn’t enough.”

Jeff Ernst, is the Principal Analyst, serving CMO and Marketing Leadership Professionals at Forrester Research and is probably best described as a thought leader in B2B marketing and sales strategy(http://www.forrester.com/rb/analyst/jeff_ernst)

“No, content curation alone is not enough to be a true thought leader.

“For people to trust you to curate or filter content for them, they need to already view you as an authority and trust that you are able to filter through the noise to deliver the content that is most useful to them.

“At minimum, as you curate content, you need to be providing your perspectives on the content you are delivering. But ideally, you need a steady stream of your own fresh ideas and perspectives, while using content curation to supplement that.”

David Meerman Scott is one of the pre-eminent thought leaders on PR and marketing. He is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, seminar leader, and author of the #1 bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR (which has been published in 26 languages) and the Wall Street Journal bestseller Real-Time Marketing & PR. He recently launched his new online book: “Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage”. (http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/)

“No.  While content that is interesting will be passed on, I am a perfect example as I tweet interesting content, however, some
component of original content is important.

“Content simply created by others is not nearly as valuable.”

Dale Bryce is the group manager marketing for Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM), a global strategic consulting, engineering and project delivery firm. He has been instrumental in their successful ‘client first’ thought leadership approach (http://www.skmconsulting.com/Home/)

“Content curation is an essential ingredient in the overall mix that is thought leadership.

“Great content needs to be relevant of course but it should act as a social lubricant for engagement with an audience. Ideally content is just the conversation starter; a catalyst to a real dialogue about how people might react and respond to the idea just placed on the metaphorical table. And from that first conversation, big things can come….!”

Marte Semb Aasmundsen, graduated this month with her MSc Strategic Public Relations and Communications
Management at The University of Stirling in the UK.  Her thesis was on thought leadership.

“No, I don’t think so.

“I think content curation may perhaps be a reason why critics are inveighing against thought leadership in the first place.

“Of course it is a useful way of identifying and re-branding an issue. But I think the trend will be to move towards more sophisticated thought leadership initiatives. For that to happen, a thought leader must be authentic.

“Authenticity, transparency and trust are values that will become even more important in the coming years.”

Britton Manasco is the founder of Manasco Marketing Partners which specializes in creating thought leadership marketing and sales enablement solutions. Britton produces a thought leadership strategy blog Illuminating the Future and the executive journal, Elevation Quarterly. (http://www.brittonmanasco.com/)

“Yes, but only if they are a skilled curator.

“Among other things, I have billed myself as a “connoisseur of contrarians.” I seek out unexpected perspectives and provocative points of view. By tapping into their contrarian insights of others, I’m able to generate content for my clients that truly resonates with their customers.

“I’m thrilled that I can get paid to do it.”

Rob Leavitt is a B2B marketing strategist, specializing in issues-based marketing. He is currently Director of Thought Leadership at PTC, a $1 billion enterprise software firm. (http://www.reputationtorevenue.com/)

“Definitely not.

“Curation is useful both internally (for education and customer/competitive/market perspective) and externally (to build interest, traffic, and credibility) but it is no substitute for your own content and conversation that provide strong and different points of view.

“I’m all for curation initiatives but strictly as a complement to your own more substantial research, publications, and presentations. Done well (which itself requires a great deal of work), curation can help you become a useful and valued resource for information and ideas, but if they are not your own ideas you are still not a thought leader.”

Dana VanDen Heuvel is a marketing consultant, author and speaker. He is a recognized expert on blogging, podcasting, RSS, Internet communities and interactive marketing trends and best practices as well as thought leadership (http://www.marketingsavant.com/)

“No, it can’t.

“I’ve seen a lot of back and forth on Twitter this year about this, but at the end of the day, curation is helpful and even essential.

“I often tell my clients that the best leaders don’t always have the answers, but they know where to get them, which is how the thought leader should approach curation.  Know where to get good content, know who to trust and know what your audience values but never think for a second that curation = thought leadership.

“The Bloom Group has articulated, what I believe, to be one of the staples in thought leadership discipline with their “seven fundamentals of a thought leadership point of view”, which every would-be thought leader should use to check their work. Moreover, “novelty”, that is, saying something new about an issue and “validity”, having proof, are two of the most critical points of a thought leadership position.

“Curation satisfies neither of those.”

Craig Badings – author of this blog and the book “Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership”, and a consultant at Sydney-based Cannings Corporate Communications.

“Find me one recognised thought leader who has attained their position as a result of curating content only.

“If you can I will be convinced that content curation can create thought leaders.

“The very nature of the term ’thought leadership’ implies original, creative or innovative thought.  In contrast, curating content implies that you are not the original generator of that content and therefore cannot claim to be a thought leader off the back of it.

“That said, I believe that curated content can play a very important role in supporting and informing a thought leadership content program. Furthermore, if the person curating the content arrives at new ideas or insights as a result of that content then it could be construed as thought leadership.”

Please download my free e book top right of this page. Follow me on twitter @thoughtstrategy and join me on LinkedIn.

12 experts on the key thought leadership trends for 2012 – outcomes

Thought leadership can deliver great outcomes

I asked 12 people who I consider to be leading global commentators on thought leadership as well as a couple who have produced some amazing thought leadership programs in-house over the years to comment on four critical thought leadership questions for 2012.

Inspired by their answers I couldn’t help chipping in with my own thoughts.

As a result of the overwhelmingly positive response, I have split the interviews into four different posts – one post per question.

In the New Year I will make available an e book containing all the answers.

Interviewees include: Bob Buday, Erica Klein, David Meerman Scott, Jeff Ernst, Rob Leavitt, Britton Manasco, Dana van den Heuvel, Matt Church, Fiona Czerniawska, Dale Bryce, Elizabeth Sosnow, Marte Semb Aaasmundsen and me.

This post covers their answers to question three:

Question three: What are the top three outcomes of a thought leadership
campaign?

 Bob Buday, president of Bloom Group LLC, a firm that helps professional services and other B2B companies gain market leadership through thought leadership (http://www.bloomgroup.com)

“One, increased awareness by your target audience that your firm possesses some expertise and a higher number of inquiries about it .

“Two, higher and faster close rates because of the ability to far better demonstrate to a prospect that you indeed do have the expertise you claim to have.

“Three, higher fees because of the ability to differentiate your expertise, and thus higher and more profitable revenue from your work.”

Erica Klein, Thought Leadership Writer and Strategist Specializing in Financial and Technology Companies(http://www.ThoughtLeadershipWriter.com)

“For my financial and technology clients, the most sought-after outcomes are:

“One, generating revenue from both new prospects and existing customers.

“Two, building reputation and brand as insightful, innovative thinkers, and lest we forget, three, establishing
the boss as a thought leader!”

Matt Church, founder of the Global Thought Leaders Movement and creator of the Million Dollar Expert Program. He is the author of 5 books including Thought Leaders and his latest Sell Your Thoughts http://www.mattchurch.com)

“One, talent retention, attraction and development.

“Two, business growth through positioning activities in the marketplace.

“Three, innovation around process and professional subject matter expertise.”

Elizabeth Sosnow, managing director of Bliss PR a business-to-business strategic public relations and marketing communications firm based in New York City (http://www.blisspr.com)

“One, new or deepened relationships with prospects or customers.

“Two, better defined competitive positioning.

“Three, holistic “glue” that integrates previously siloed marketing programs.”

Jeff Ernst, is the Principal Analyst, serving CMO and Marketing Leadership Professionals at Forrester Research and is probably best described as a thought leader in B2B marketing and sales strategy (http://www.forrester.com/rb/analyst/jeff_ernst)

“When you go from thinking of thought leadership as a campaign to thinking of it as a cornerstone of your go-to-market strategy, you can expect to have these outcomes:

1. Customers, prospects, influencers, and competitors admire your company as having ground-breaking ideas and incredibly
   insightful POVs on the critical issues your buyers face.
2. People who engage with your thought leadership ideas are so inspired they immediately share them with colleagues within their company and within their professional and social networks.
3. Prospective customers knock on your door, already philosophically aligned with your company’s approach to solving their problems, ready to engage with your sales executives.”

David Meerman Scott is one of the pre-eminent thought leaders on PR and marketing. He is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, seminar leader, and author of the #1 bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR (which has been published in 26 languages) and the Wall Street Journal bestseller Real-Time Marketing & PR. He recently launched his new online book: “Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage”. (http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/)

“First, content will be shared if it is valuable.  People will share it on twitter, Facebook, blogs and the like with the result your content will reach far more people.

“Second, people will subscribe to your content either whether that is via e mail, RSS feeds, etc.  They’ll want more if you do a good job.

“Finally, it will brand your organisation as one worthy with which to do business.  People will seek you out if you’re smart about providing content that educates and helps them solve their problems.”

Dale Bryce is the group manager marketing for Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM), a global strategic consulting, engineering and project delivery firm. He has been instrumental in their successful ‘client first’ thought leadership approach (http://www.skmconsulting.com/Home/)

“Client engagement, reputation building and winning the work you want to win.”

Marte Semb Aasmundsen, graduated this month with her MSc Strategic Public Relations and Communications
Management at The University of Stirling in the UK.  Her thesis was on thought leadership.

“Building expertise and reputation internally and externally.  Changing industry standards and perhaps even drive paradigm shifts, and gaining influence and becoming industry leaders.

“And I must add a fourth point; stakeholder engagement. Thought leadership encourages two-way communication and is therefore a great way to include stakeholders in the decision-making process.”

Britton Manasco is the founder of Manasco Marketing Partners which specializes in creating thought leadership marketing and sales enablement solutions. Britton produces a thought leadership strategy blog Illuminating the Future and the executive journal, Elevation Quarterly. (http://www.brittonmanasco.com/)

“That would be: customer awareness (as measured by marketing qualified leads); customer engagement (as measured by sales qualified leads); and customer commitment (as measured by closed deals).

“SiriusDecisions has done a good job of articulating the relevant metrics.”

Rob Leavitt is a B2B marketing strategist, specializing in issues-based marketing. He is currently Director of Thought Leadership at PTC, a $1 billion enterprise software firm. (http://www.reputationtorevenue.com/)

“Increased credibility with customers and market influencers (analysts, bloggers, media, etc.) that the company is an important voice on the issue; new relationships and opportunities with customers focused on forward thinking solutions; and increased internal support for a thought leadership-oriented approach to the market.”

Fiona Czerniawska is one of the foremost global authorities on thought leadership, particularly in the management consultancy space. She is the co-founder of Source, a company specialising in researching the consulting industry (http://www.sourceforconsulting.com)

“A client who, having read your article, acts on something in it.  This may be quite a small, apparently insignificant action (forwarding an email to a colleague) but all of our research indicates that any action increases the chance that the ideas in the article and the firm associated with them will be remembered.

“A partner/consultant making a trip to see a client.  We tend to think that the outcomes of TL should be external, but there are huge benefits to articles/reports etc, which galvanize account managers and partners to visit their clients, taking the material with them and explaining to their client in person why it’s relevant to them.

“The ability to own an issue.  Thought leadership should be good enough to ensure that, on a particular issue, your firm will always be on the shortlist because you’re seen as the pre-eminent experts in that field.”

Dana VanDen Heuvel is a marketing consultant, author and speaker. He is a recognized expert on blogging, podcasting, RSS, Internet communities and interactive marketing trends and best practices as well as thought leadership (http://www.marketingsavant.com/)

“I like to  refer back to my original “thought leadership marketing equation” and state that Share of Voice, Share of Mind and Share of Market are the key outcomes of any thought leadership campaign, but I have a few others that I believe are critical.

1. “Marketplace momentum.  Thought leadership is cumulative where an advertising or promotions-centered approach is diminishing.  Pursuing the road of the thought leader, over time, builds tremendous momentum that can continue to propel an organization’s message long after the original piece of content was published.
2. “Quicker cycle times. In our experience thought leadership actually helps the customer decide (as opposed to helps the organization sell) who is best for them based on the advance knowledge they can obtain about an organization and how they think, act and work via their content.
3. “Category of One companies.  I’m a fan of Joe Calloway’s book “Becoming a Category of One” and I believe that the thought
   leadership approach allows an organization to tell a customer-centric story in a way that positions that organization as the only one telling that story and give that organization an opportunity to be seen as truly unique.”

Craig Badings – author of this blog and the book “Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership”, and a consultant at Sydney-based Cannings Corporate Communications.

“For me the most powerful is the emotional connection you forge with your client.

“If, as a result of your thought leadership campaign, your clients or your target audience get a sense that you really get them and the issues they face and that you are helping them overcome these it leads to the second outcome – differentiation.

“Your thought leadership needs to differentiate your brand from the competition.

“Finally it should position you as the ‘go to’ expert in your field and with this comes that all important brand quality – trust.

“I have created a list of 70+ thought leadership benefits here if you want to take a look.”

Please download my free e book top right of this page. Follow me on twitter @thoughtstrategy and join me on LinkedIn.

12 experts on the key thought leadership trends for 2012 – challenges

Experts share the challenges faced by thought leadership

I asked 12 people who I consider to be leading global commentators on thought leadership as well as some who have produced some amazing thought leadership programs in-house over the years to comment on four critical thought leadership questions for 2012.

Inspired by their answers I couldn’t help chipping in with my own thoughts.

As a result of the overwhelmingly positive response, I have split the interviews into four different posts – one post per question.

In the New Year I will make available an e book containing all the answers.

Interviewees include: Bob Buday, Erica Klein, David Meerman Scott, Jeff Ernst, Rob Leavitt, Britton Manasco, Dana van den Heuvel, Matt Church, Fiona Czerniawska, Dale Bryce, Elizabeth Sosnow, Marte Semb Aaasmundsen and me.

This post covers their answers to question two:

Question two: From your experience, what are the biggest challenges in
getting a thought leadership program off the ground?

Bob Buday, president of Bloom Group LLC, a firm that helps professional services and other B2B companies gain market leadership through thought leadership (http://www.bloomgroup.com)

“It’s easy to get a thought leadership program off the ground. Many firms start by outsourcing a white paper to a third party like my firm and then do little else. In my experience, this rarely works because the expectations are so high (“We expect the white paper to generate hundreds of leads quickly”) and the understanding of what it takes to have an effective thought leadership program so low.

“These firms typically have little appetite for creating a thought leadership machine because that takes budget and time. Even more important, they don’t realize how much time that their internal experts will need to spend on the program – in writing, developing their ideas, presenting them publically, and in working with others to capture their ideas.

“So I’ll change the question slightly and then answer it: The biggest challenge to getting a highly effective thought leadership program off the ground (“effective” defined as generating leads and revenue) is a recognition by those who are funding the program that they will need to commit sufficient time (no quick miracle results) and resources (yes, budget, and as important people’s time to participate in it) to the endeavor.

“If they don’t, there will be initial excitement and eventual disinterest as they find “that thought leadership white paper didn’t do much.”

Erica Klein, Thought Leadership Writer and Strategist Specializing in Financial and Technology Companies(http://www.ThoughtLeadershipWriter.com)

“As a thought leadership writer and consultant, I develop a detailed Project Brief for my clients upfront, something they generally don’t have enough time to do themselves, but which can serve as a solid foundation for every step of the process.

“The single greatest obstacle in launching a thought leadership initiative is not having a detailed document that clearly articulates the desired results, expected budget range, the list of key approvers and important influencers, content and graphics development stages, and realistic timeframes.

“Many a terrific thought leadership program has foundered on the rocks of project management and time management.”

Matt Church, founder of the Global Thought Leaders Movement and creator of the Million Dollar Expert Program. He is the author of 5 books including Thought Leaders and his latest Sell Your Thoughts http://www.mattchurch.com)

“Mediocrity!

“A thought leadership program is not for the faint of heart, it’s not a short-term trend or cool idea. It’s about focussing on your best and brightest and communicating their uniqueness to the internal and external audiences. “

Elizabeth Sosnow, managing director of Bliss PR a business-to-business strategic public elations and marketing communications firm based in New York City (http://www.blisspr.com)

“Thought leadership projects almost always falter without a differentiated, actionable idea.  It’s pretty simple. If you spend the
time to get your ideas in order, the rest of program falls neatly into place.

“Another frequent challenge – finding the right thought leader.

“A good program requires an articulate thinker who understands how to inspire their audience segment.  Ideally, that thought
leader actually becomes the embodiment of the idea.”

Jeff Ernst, is the Principal Analyst, serving CMO and Marketing Leadership Professionals at Forrester Research and is probably best described as a thought leader in B2B marketing and sales strategy (http://www.forrester.com/rb/analyst/jeff_ernst)

“The biggest challenge my clients face is getting the commitment from senior management to make thought leadership a top priority and to allocate time from the subject matter experts in the company who are needed to define the thought leadership platform and develop the idea hierarchy.”

David Meerman Scott is one of the pre-eminent thought leaders on PR and marketing. He is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, seminar leader, and author of the #1 bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR (which has been published in 26 languages) and the Wall Street Journal bestseller Real-Time Marketing & PR. He recently launched his new online book: “Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage”. (http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/)

“Typically marketing people spend their time talking about products and services.  The average marketing person is very good at
doing things like brochures and advertising but they have great difficulty in providing thought leadership-type content that has nothing to do with their products or services.

“In fact most of them are terrible at not talking about their products and services.  Even a lot of the thought leadership campaigns out there currently contain too many product and service mentions.”

Dale Bryce is the group manager marketing for Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM), a global strategic consulting, engineering and project delivery firm. He has been  instrumental in their successful ‘client first’ thought leadership approach (http://www.skmconsulting.com/Home/)

“The challenge in professional services is often to get the gurus to see the big picture. Ironic isn’t it?

“Why?” is always a great first question to ask, or to answer.

“It is a delight working with such brilliant people, in my case engineering and before that the law, but even brilliant people need context. And that context usually needs to come from a deeper understanding of clients and their business – their commercial and technical issues and personal needs too.

“We have been running a Client Insights program for a while now. Our clients are clearly telling us they want us to stay in touch, “not just take the order”.  They want someone to bring forward valuable ideas. And, they actually want unsolicited proposals that solve their problems.

“So, in terms of thought leadership, especially in professional services, time needs to be spent on the “Why?”, before we launch into the “What?”.  And that can be a challenge.

“Subject matter expertise is a given in thought leadership. The key is connecting the dots, for clients and our thought leaders too.”

Marte Semb Aasmundsen, graduated this month with her MSc Strategic Public Relations and Communications Management at The University of Stirling in the UK.  Her thesis was on thought leadership.

“It is absolutely necessary to get backing from the board. Also, companies must understand that true thought leadership takes time to build, and needs a great deal of work and resources.

“It must be well researched and align with the perceptions and values of a brand and their stakeholders.”

Britton Manasco is the founder of Manasco Marketing Partners which specializes in creating thought leadership marketing and sales enablement solutions. Britton produces a thought leadership strategy blog Illuminating the Future and the executive journal, Elevation Quarterly. (http://www.brittonmanasco.com/)

“If I switch to the marketing perspective (as opposed to sales), I’d say that the biggest challenge is the creation of relevant, compelling and insightful content.

“It’s best if you are strong at drawing on outside and independent perspectives – whether they come from market influencers or buyers/practitioners. It takes rigor, discipline and a defined program to generate content that works in an ongoing fashion.

“You’ll probably want to hire empathic and proven content creators – people who can produce interesting content in many formats and for many buyers.”

Rob Leavitt is a B2B marketing strategist, specializing in issues-based marketing. He is currently Director of Thought Leadership at PTC, a $1 billion enterprise software firm. (http://www.reputationtorevenue.com/)

“I’m actually doing this myself these days so the question is far from academic!

“Three of the biggest challenges I’m facing right now are turning general interest across the organization into a focused program with agreed priorities, processes, and production; balancing the desire for ramping up content production with the need to build serious, deep, and credible points of view on key customer issues; and building a strong enough network of relationships with
customers and sales people to make sure the program is truly focused on what is most useful with those two key groups.”

Fiona Czerniawska is one of the foremost global authorities on thought leadership, particularly in the management consultancy space. She is the co-founder of Source, a company specialising in researching the consulting industry (http://www.sourceforconsulting.com)

“Where to start?  The best thought leadership comes down to picking topical issues, researching them thoroughly to a point where you have something new to say, and then writing the results up in an appealing and engaging manner.

“The first of these (picking topical issues) depends on having a) a clear view of what your clients are interested in – ideally more than a vague sense, but something itself grounded in research – and b) a culture / decision-making process which makes it possible to make decisions.  Many firms end up producing thought leadership on too many areas because they’re afraid to choose.

“The second (thorough research and new insights) comes down to what I term the ‘second day in the room’ syndrome: lots of firms are prepared to get their experts together for a day, but the firms that stand out in thought leadership terms are those who make them go back in for a second day – and that’s symptomatic of a commitment to research and investment.

“The third and final point (appeal and engagement) depends on recognition that there’s a lot of (too much!) thought leadership out there and you have to be brave if you’re going to stand out.

“So taking risks is a necessary part of doing thought leadership well.”

Dana VanDen Heuvel is a marketing consultant, author and speaker. He is a recognized expert on blogging, podcasting, RSS, Internet communities and interactive marketing trends and best practices as well as thought leadership (http://www.marketingsavant.com/)

“I have seen a few hurdles that typically keep an organization from thought leadership success:

“First, the confidence conundrum. In order to be a thought leader, an organization’s leadership must have the confidence that they can pull off the thought leader posture in the marketplace.  If anyone on the leadership team feels that the organization is under-qualified, then the idea of thought leadership will smolder, so to speak, but never really catch fire within the organization.  Moreover, if thought leadership can’t be sustained as an idea in the organization, it will never resonate with the
market.

“Second, I’m not a publisher” mentality. In order to be a successful thought leader, organizations need to both think and publish.  Yes, there’s more to it, but good strong content is as the core of a thought leadership program. I hear from countless organizations who would like to ascend to the “expert in their industry”, thought leader or “trusted advisor” status who just can’t get it together when it comes to creating content.

“Third, differentiation in the marketplace.  Taking a position as a thought leader requires that you have true differentiation not only of products but more importantly of ideas.  Organizations need to be “original thinkers” in order to manifest thought leadership. While I always believe that any business that’s been around for even a few years has found its differentiation, knowing that you’re different and being able to articulate that in a thought leadership position to the market remains a challenge.”

Craig Badings – author of this blog and the book “Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership”, and a consultant at Sydney-based Cannings Corporate Communications.

“Three things: if it’s not centred on your client issues and challenges it will fail or at best limp along; a lack of resources to properly plan, leverage and maintain your thought leadership point of view; and a lack of commitment from senior management.”

Please download my free e book top right of this page. Follow me on twitter @thoughtstrategy and join me on LinkedIn.

Bookmark this savvy thought leader

Dana Lynn Smith, The Savvy Bookmarketer displays some great thought leadership characteristics

Every now and then you come across an example of a campaign, a company or an individual who exemplifies great thought leadership practice.

Dana Lynn Smith is the women behind the Savvy Book Marketer and the author of The Savvy Book Marketer Guides.  She specializes in developing marketing plans for nonfiction books and teaching authors how to promote their books online. 

In doing so she displays all the marks of a thought leader in her niche.  She is an expert in how authors should market and promote their book/s. 

Characteristics of a thought leader

Some of the thought leadership characteristics she displays include:

·         A clear understanding of the challenges and issues authors face in raising their profile.

·         A single-minded focus on an area she can own and one which plays to her expertise more importantly one which she is targeted at her clients’ needs.

·         Deep diving i.e. she has done a really deep dive into her niche providing insights across all the challenges faced by authors.

·         Saying something new – the information she provides differentiates her from the competitors and in the process, she has positioned herself as a trusted advisors or ‘go to’ expert in her field.

·         Leveraging and packaging material and content across every touch point of her target audience and her prospects.

·         And while I can’t say this for certain, as I haven’t met Dana, thought leadership and providing new, insightful information to her audience seems to be very much part of the culture of who she is and how she does business.

Thought leaders share

What I love about Dana is her willingness to share and give away heaps of useful content.  Visit her site, subscribe to her enewsletter and you will see what I mean.

Besides her blog, The Savvy Bookmarketer, Dana has authored The Savvy Book Marketer Guides, a series of ebooks on book marketing topics. 

She has a heap of useful guides which you can download for a minimal fee.  These include topics like: Sell More Books on Amazon; Successful Social Marketing; Twitter Guide for Authors; Facebook Guide for Authors; Selling Your Book to Libraries and Texas Book Marketing Handbook.

In addition, she has a treasure trove of free articles on how to market and promote yourself – great stuff for all those aspiring or already published authors.  

Finally, Dana is making maximum use of social media to deliver her content far and wide from her ranch in Austin, Texas.

For aspiring thought leaders, Dana is a great example of how you can set out and become a thought leader in a niched area.  Visit her site to take a look and learn.

Have you carved a niche for yourself in a particular area?  Do you know someone who has?  Is there someone you admire as a thought leader?  If so let me know.

Follow me on twitter @thoughtstrategy

Interview with communications measurement expert Michael Ziviani

Michael Ziviani is the CEO of Precise-Value, a business he started in 1999 after leaving his role as the research manager for Microsoft Australia.  Michael has brought a whole new dynamic and rigour to the art of measuring communications.  He and his team have lifted measurement to a new level by providing remarkably detailed and valuable insights into the worth and return of marketing and communication campaigns.

 The information he provides not only enables practitioners to measure their campaigns but also to recalibrate and focus their efforts to maximise their future returns on these campaigns.

Michael is constantly stretching the boundaries of where and how one can use coverage and campaign analysis to strategically help organisations drive even better value. He has recently been using advanced analysis of communications and CSR to prove the business benefit to organisations.

I interviewed him about his work in this field.  This is what he had to say:

1.       Michael after years analysing data previously with Microsoft and now with your own business Precise Value, you have some interesting observations that measurement alone is limiting, can you expand on that?

Businesses today measures lots of things – almost as if some kind of compulsion for KPI’s makes managers seem more in control. But what do those numbers really mean?

It pays to put measurement aside to seek deeper learning from evaluation and analysis. Real analysis is a quest for creating new business value or at least mapping out how to access that value for marketing and communications professionals. To get there we need a longer-term business growth solution, not tick-a-box measurement. That means providing insights with enough detail and colour to make the journey easy.

For example, I used to get asked by Product Managers ‘What’s our market share in segment X for product Y?’ So I’d say 42% – now what do you do? They’d realise then the need to know much more. So it’s a mix of qualitative (descriptive) and quantitative (KPIs) that’s actually required.

[Like: Tell me more about the audience – what needs do they have, what they think about us, even what words they use around our products. Do our comms messages resonate with that? Do the right messages have enough weight in the right media?]

2.       What business value should organisations look for from, for example, their media coverage?

Well, we know from focus groups the impact of media on consumer choice is significant. Think about your own buying decisions and how likely you are to base a decision on, say, advertising alone. Most communications professionals intuitively know this and have done for years – but they haven’t been able to prove it in concrete terms. They also need to know where to focus for best effect.

This means creating a link between media outputs and business outcomes. The link can be made in four steps:

A systematic approach makes it possible to capture each step in concrete numbers. Most Communications activity, including PR, drives brand health up or down over time. Our experience also suggests PR drives the hardest to shift areas of brand consideration, preference and loyalty. Understanding your brand health position is fundamental to understanding where sales come from. And crucially, knowing where to focus for best results. The business value is in understanding  how to achieve better results and do so more efficiently. Whilst I think most managers get this idea they seldom have the systematic analysis setup to support it in practice.

[For example, if a big communications push did not drive any mid-term sales result could you answer why? The above analysis gives you that answer.]

3.       There is an increasing sense that marketing is content and content is marketing.  How important is it to track the impact of content put out to market by companies?

Everyone wants us to do more with less these days but how do we do that and still have a life? I think we need to work smarter not harder by bringing some science to the art of communications.

By creating structured feedback we can show which content had what impact, where. This is particularly important when the communications objective changes over time – as does the competitive landscape.  The tracking analysis is like a map that shows you the shortest path to meeting those objectives. It makes you more effective at what you do by:

·         Reducing the effort required to achieve the same result

·         Giving you the ammunition to argue for more budget

·         Helping you outperform competitors

·         Complementing your skills & proving your value

·         Identifying who and what had the most (and least) impact

This approach forms the basis of what you could call high performance marketing communications.

4.       In your view do you think business today understands the value they can extract from an in depth analysis of their coverage?

I think business is heavily distracted by change. As human beings we like routine, we like predictability and clarity. The problem is there are many forces now acting to create change and doing so at a faster pace than ever before. Those forces act in ambiguous and often complex ways so running on gut feel is not really feasible anymore.

In some ways communications professionals themselves need to see what is possible using advanced analysis. Most I speak with are amazed at the possibilities and the sources of new value. Much of that value comes from the depth of results which describe in detail how to grasp opportunities and mitigate threats.

This is really about mastering change in a systematic way. That means setting up a structure for analysis that matches your business and communications aims in a customised way.  Repeating that analysis regularly creates a Plan-Do-Refine feedback loop. The feedback helps us master a dynamic media environment and the depth shows how to grasp opportunities and mitigate threats. Such strategic guidance can create massive value for an organisation. And that value can be proven with concrete numbers.

5.       You believe media coverage can impact a company’s share price and you have been doing some work on this – please explain. 

Once we had worked with the activity-outcome model above we knew it could be applied to significant business outcomes like share price. It just made sense that communications activity would affect share price. So we set about R&D to prove that link. After many months of careful statistics we found the proof.

For the R&D case study, results suggested that PR represented one-quarter (¼) of the controllable factors driving share price movement. That almost implies one-quarter of your efforts to boost share price are directed to communications in the media. It’s a fantastic business case. Of course you also need the material to communicate!

6.       After years of analysing media coverage and its impact on numerous spokespeople and brands, how important is building a profile to being seen as a thought leader in the industry?

Thought Leadership creates a point of difference based typically on innovation and interest. It is almost never negative but instead adds a richness to the subtle ‘brand attributes’ within coverage we see. Our assessment tracks a range of attributes in client and competitor coverage so we can quantify that richness. We expect Thought Leadership to be more resilient during crises when attributes like Trustworthy or Quality may suffer erosion.

There are great examples we have seen on couching Thought Leadership and Industry research is case in point. One strategy here is to seek out a slightly offbeat take on the industry by focusing the research on something unusual. That approach can capture interest to get greater cut-through. I like that quirky curiosity the media seem to have.

7.       From your experience and the thousands of media articles you have analysed over the years, what qualities do thought leaders in their respective industries display?

The client or spokesperson is generally providing industry leadership.  Often they are able to explain or predict linkages between various complex concepts or between a particular piece of research and current events.  Overseas trends may also factor in here.  Depending on the medium, a thought leader will be able to explain the more complex concepts or research findings in everyday terms and without jargon. 

The delivery is generally subtle. It would be unusual for us to see a spokesperson spruiking the services of the client overtly. This is generally an outcome of the thought leadership with the client seen as the ‘go to’ firm in that field.

Though leaders and thought leadership operates differently across industries. The Financial industry often provides advice or research with good success. That research sometimes generates significant proportions of the Impact we see.

Other industries might gain respect by showing leadership through products, or product innovation for example. The Electronics industry tends to prize technical innovation – thought leadership to them means a better product.  Service based firms may demonstrate their knowledge and research round clients needs particularly into the future. .

Across various fields, the articles where there is thought leadership are more favourable than those where it is lacking. On our 5-point scale (from -2 to +2) the uplift has ranged from +0.3 to +0.8 – very noticeable shifts.

While thought leadership can appear even without a spokesperson, usually the two work together. We have certainly found that any spokesperson mention is beneficial to articles – the average uplift here is about +0.6, a substantial boost.

The 9 fundamentals of thought leadership

The nine fundamentals to thought leadership

Here are the nine fundamentals to being a thought leader:

1.)    Research your target audience – identify the challenges and issues they face in their daily lives/businesses. This is the most important clue and driver of your thought leadership direction.

2.)    What do you want to be famous for? – Identify what area you want to own in your sector or industry. Focus on where your areas of expertise lie and analyse how you can you build an even deeper understanding backed by empirical data and always remember to focus it on your clients’ needs.

3.)    Scan your competitors – are they doing anything in that space? If they are, don’t bother competing rather find a new space you can own.

4.)    Deep dive – once you’ve identified the space you want to own it is important to go really deep into that area with evidence based research – opinions and using other people’s content certainly won’t cut it if you truly want to position yourself as a thought leader.

5.)    Set objectives and kpis for your campaign – it needs to support and underpin some solid business objectives and it needs to be measured so that improvements can b made and it can be recalibrated along the way.

6.)    Say something new – if you don’t your so-called thought leadership point of view will realistically only amount to another piece of content and there is a lot of content out there. This is about differentiating yourself from your competitors and positioning yourselves as the trusted advisors or ‘go to’ experts in your field.

7.)    Thought leadership champions – Identify and involve your thought leadership champions from the beginning – someone has to own this and act as your spokesperson and preferably someone senior so that you gain the business traction and senior backing you need in order for it to be a success.

8.)    Leverage and packaging – cleverly package your content across every touch point of your target audience and prospects.   There is a lot written about content management, content marketing, content curation.  Call it what you will, the point is read the material it will give you some good ideas on how to leverage your content and take it to market.

9.)    Make it part of your culture – there are many well known brands out there such as McKinsey, Deloitte, Booz & Company who have thought leadership ingrained in their culture.  They manage it as an important part of their business and the ROI on their thought leadership campaigns have been fantastic as a result.

Let me know if you have any other fundamental steps you think I should add.

The secret questions of successful thought leaders

The four secret questions for effective thought leadership

Good thought leaders or thought leadership campaigns should ask four key questions before they even start:

1.      Where do we get most of our business and what are their key issues/challenges?

Without this knowledge your thought leadership position is much like shooting in the dark in terms of whether it will have the desired impact on your targets.

2.      What knowledge/expertise do I/we have that we can research further to deliver something of real value to address these issues/challenges?

You want your thought leadership position to enable you to play to your expertise and showcase this and your thinking in your chosen space.  Wherever that knowledge or intellectual property can inform your thought leadership point of view, use it wisely.

3.      For what do I/we want to be known/famous?

When your ideal client base says that is the firm/person who has incredible insights into x.  What is that x?  What is it you want to be famous for?

4.      How do I/we best leverage our thought leadership content to share it with our market?

Many thought leadership campaigns I have seen are not leveraged to their full extent.  Once you have identified your point of view, make sure you apply a sound, strategic content management strategy to your thought leadership property.  Are you squeezing every element of your content across every touch point your target audiences?

How you answer these four questions is critical to your thought leadership point of view and how you take it to market.

Thought leadership must have a business objective

However, there is one, űber thought leadership question that remains.  It is the glue that should bind and guide your whole campaign:

“What are our business objectives for this thought leadership campaign?”

This should underpin everything you do.  Without a business objective or objectives your campaign isn’t measureable and you will probably have difficulty eliciting the commitment from senior executives.

I can’t stress this enough – your thought leadership needs to be drive very clear business objectives in order to gain the credence and top-level commitment it requires to succeed.

It can be as simple and focused as:  “We want to gain one-on-one access to the CFOs of the top 200 listed companies.”

Alternatively, you can have two or three objectives.  My view is that if you have more than three you are probably spreading your objectives to thin.

Your objectives should:

·        Be singular in focus

·        Be easy to measure

·        Rally everyone around it

Get these fundamentals right and you give yourself every chance of success for your thought leadership campaign.

Good luck.  Let me know if you have any other questions you think should be framed up front to help guide your campaign.