I THINK THEREFORE I PLAN: THE PERILS OF AD HOC THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

I know many will be putting together, as we speak, their Annual Business Development Strategy and Marketing Plans for next year (whether they ever get used is a different question of course – but let’s assume they do!).

Now should also be the time to be putting together a Thought Leadership Strategy for 2024.

What do I even mean by this? The fact that I have to ask this question speaks of the problem.

We all know that your Business Development Strategy will lay out which market sectors you plan to penetrate (as well as new key regions) and even the specific key clients you intend to approach, whilst your Marketing Plan will detail the ways in which you intend to reach and influence people such that these things happen.

Now, Thought Leadership Marketing almost always tends to get subsumed into the Marketing Plan. For example, the Marketing Plan may reduce Thought Leadership activities to 2 or 3 bullet points such as:

- publish x number of articles in the industry press on a x subject;

- Start / revive / keep up with / do more with the company Blog;

- Publish at least one White Paper this year.

The difficulty is that these sorts of Marketing Activities are profoundly different to other Marketing Strategies such as Social Media (and most companies have a Social Media Strategy, but not a Thought Leadership Strategy). They are connected of course: indeed you will probably promote your Thought Leadership via Social Media. However they are fundamentally different activities.

Critically, Thought Leadership Marketing done properly should be intimately tied into Research & Development activities, as well as your Company Ethos / Vision, Brand Values and various Position Statements on Key Issues. Social Media can arguably done well without too much direct connection to any of the above, since it relies on short, sharp and frequent communication and is not concerned with articulating depth.

How is Thought Leadership Strategy connected to R&D and Company Ethos?

Unless you are undertaking Thought Leadership marketing in the most cynical fashion (if you’ve read any of my work before you’ll know I call this ‘faux Thought Leadership’ and, whilst it might seem like a quick win it will not serve you long-term). The features you write, as well as your blogs, White Papers and books (either self-published or conventionally published under the CEO's name) should be repeatedly cutting to the core of:

a) what your business stands for – its Vision, its Ethics, its Position(s), its USP, and

b) what is most innovative and cutting-edge about you.

But crucially it has to do this in a very in-depth and thoughtful way which also provides genuine value and insights to readers (i.e. potential future clients).

Remember – Thought Leadership marketing is a long-haul strategy and relies on the same core values and messages being repeated, engagingly, many times but in different ways, and all without ever resorting back to overt company horn-tooting. It is also, critically, about selling by gaining respect; by being considered a / the ‘leader of thinking’ in your specific area.

Thought Leadership is ultimately the opportunity to prove that your Company Vision / Ethos and your Stance on certain topical issues are Real, Deep and Authentic and are not merely straplines but true ideas that actually run through your services and the way you do business. Absolutely anybody can knock out a cheap Position Statement or Strapline. Okay, that’s not strictly true – some people are better at writing Straplines than others. The problem is, very few people believe them anymore.

Take the glaring example of Sustainability and ESG. All too often documents on these have no genuine relation to what the company is doing / selling and are merely contrived add-ons designed to be seen to have a stance, or to have something to say in an ESG statement.

By contrast, I once worked for a company who did not need to invent sustainability statements because what they did was truly and inherently sustainable. In fact the issue here was the opposite – they hadn’t even fully realised how sustainable they inherently were and so had failed to market this as such. Now, much of their work was refurbishing listed buildings, which require very unique and low-key approaches to energy efficiency. As such, you cannot whack a solar panel or wind turbine or green roof on a listed building to trumpet to the entire world that you are green. And because their approaches had to specialist and subtle (and refurbishing is in itself sustainable) this company’s sustainability stance did not need to be invented – it just needed teasing out and clearly articulating over and over again.

Genuine (and therefore effective) Thought Leadership is as such profoundly embedded in a company's entire modus operandi as well as intimately related to its R&D endeavours.

Sounds Great. What’s the problem?

The problem is that this sort of Thought Leadership rarely happens. In fact in its most cynical and Bargain Basement form it rather goes something like this:

Marketing thinks ‘we need a blog’ Or ‘we need to be seen to have a blog’ or ‘we need to do more with the blog for SEO’ (now I’m not arguing with the importance of SEO, purely with the fact that it shouldn’t be the only purpose of a blog!). Ergo, Marketing adds ‘do a blog’ in a bullet point somewhere within the Marketing Plan. December done.

January: Somebody in Marketing is tasked with finding someone to write a blog. They scour LinkedIn looking for a ‘a content writer’ on ‘insert basic subject area’. Because of the lack of specificity, hundreds of people come up of immensely varying abilities. A handful of these are ‘chosen’ and a demand for a ‘proposal’ and samples is then put out, with the aim of assessing writing skill alone. At this point there will likely be meetings with the shortlist. Finally, one is selected, tasked with writing x number of blog posts on x subject and left to get on with it.

THE END.

What’s Wrong with this Picture? Absolutely Everything!

My Friends – this is not Thought Leadership!

For a start, the very nature of the process is back to front and almost destined to produce a blog which, no matter how well written, will provide very little benefit beyond SEO.

Not least, when undertaken in this way, the Content Writer or Blogger finally hired is highly unlikely to be able to produce meaningful Thought Leadership that functions as such (which is in no way to discredit these writers – this is a problem in the strategy, not the hire). Why? Because an experienced professional who understands Thought Leadership & Editorial Strategy would not be able to provide a proposal for such work without an extensive meeting with the CEO! By definition anybody who is willing to provide a proposal based on zero knowledge of a company or its goals is not going to be able to provide meaningful Thought Leadership Content. Wordage? Yes. Thought Leadership, no. And it gets worse:

The ‘content’ produced will:

· Serve no meaningful purpose for the readers, because it hasn't been created with their specific needs in mind;

· Have no meaningful connection to wider Company Goals, let alone Company Vision;

· Be produced in the absence of any meaningful contact between the people in the company who have the relevant material, namely, the CEO, Key Directors, the Head of R&D;

· Be fairly indistinguishable from the blogs of the competition, and may be shallow, since the writer may have only superficial knowledge of the sector, of the Company Vision, or of Editorial Strategy, and, what’s more, no understanding that they lack this understanding;

· There is usually also a disconnect between the writer of the blog (say) and other hired writers, for example of the White Papers, or the ghostwriters of conventionally published material, since nobody is overseeing the Bigger Picture, except possibly the Head of Marketing, who may themselves have little understanding of Editorial Strategy.

Of course there’s nothing to stop you doing things this way and it almost certainly involves less effort. It will perhaps:

- improve your SEO through key words;

- increase your brand recognition purely due to seeing your company name pop up more frequently (but this assumes that posts are in-depth and great quality in the first place, since Search Engines increasingly penalise 'thin' or 'shallow content'); similarly, features in conventional print press that talk about company projects but share no valuable ideas will also increase brand recognition, but will not build trust because they offer no value to readers,

- and that may be all you want.

What it won’t do is:

- Make your or your company into Thought Leaders;

- Increase the respect for your company.

Why does this Matter?

It may not! It all depends on what you were trying to achieve.

But a great example of the difference between being recognised and being respected might be the difference between Unilever and Kraft-Heinz back in 2017. Not only did Unilever’s then CEO Paul Polman author a fantastic book revisioning a more Sustainable Growth Strategy but he had something deeply meaningful to write because it was at the time embedded in the entire Company strategy and way of thinking.

So what? It’s interesting that in the takeover bid, where Kraft-Heinz should easily have won out due to its sheer heft, it actually lost. Why? Because Unilever strongly and publicly stood for something (great relationships also helped of course) that ran right through the company’s way of working – even resisting immense pressure from Shareholders. The level of respect for Unilever gave them massive leverage.

That’s the difference between being recognised and being respected.

That’s also the difference between Faux Thought Leadership & the Real Thing.

Would you feel better if you knew you had your Thought Leadership Strategy clarified for 2025? Do look at our New Year offer here - I can have you Up & Running in January.

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