Time to Replace Thought Leadership with Something Real

— March 6, 2018

Time to Replace Thought Leadership with Something Real

johnhain / Pixabay

Sometimes a little intra-department rivalry is a good thing. For example, I used to have a running bet with my colleague about who could be the first to make a sales director roll their eyes. At our monthly sales and marketing alignment meeting (on which, if you have that as the title of your meeting, it’s pretty much a guarantee that you will never be aligned), Kevin would start his timer and we’d begin the monthly review of campaigns and funnels and so on. Whoever got the first eye-roll won a beer on the other’s dime. My record (and still a personal best) was 3 seconds, which is how long it takes to say: “Today I want to introduce our thought leadership strategy.”

Victory, in this case, was bittersweet. While paying for my beer, Kevin pointed out that I actually had one hell of a problem on my hands. The words that came out of my mouth may have been “thought leadership,” the words that lodged in those sales squirrel brains were “steaming pile of horse sh*t that doesn’t help me sell.” Much of the time, sadly, they are right.

The truth is, most brand thought leadership programs are basically dump trucks full of content, versus any attempt to create and sustain meaningful conversations. So, let’s tackle the problem of the term, thought leadership. I

t’s actually quite meaningless, when you consider it. Is it meant to suggest you’ve thought of something first? Or that you think of something the most? Or maybe you just think it the best. All of which are pretty absurd when it comes to a brand.

So let’s chuck that vague idea and call it what it is, which is a tangible demonstration of something your brand wants to be considered good at. How about Demonstrated Useful Expertise (DUE)? I rearranged the words a few times and liked the neat acronym the best but feel free to do with it what you will.

I like this better than thought leadership for a few reasons: First, it imposes some constraints by suggesting that whatever it is you are doing in its name, it had better produce demonstrable evidence that your brand knows what it’s talking about – that can be content, but it can also be sponsorship, investment, partnerships, recruiting and other activities.

The useful part is about recognizing the inherent eye-rollyness of most thought leadership strategies. In this conception, you actually have to add some value to the conversation with something useful. That, too, can be content, but it can also be instruction, investment or a shiny new product.

The third element, expertise, is helpful because it asks us to get a little more specific on the idea of leadership. I, for example, can go out there and think great big thoughts about nano technology. I can write white papers, I can give speeches and I can make an infographic. What I can’t do is actually demonstrate any expertise because I just don’t have any, beyond regurgitating other peoples’ ideas on nano-thingies. This is the spot where a lot brands get into trouble.

Let’s Make it CRASS

It’s one thing to champion an idea or get behind a trend; it’s quite another to have the authority to do so. For example, take a look through your email and count the number of times someone is trying to sell you on their blockchain expertise. In my case, today, it’s about a dozen. But when I dig a bit deeper (seriously, a tiny bit), I find a bunch of marketers with no particular domain expertise beyond the booking of a speaker who purports to have domain expertise. Then I look at IBM and their work on big data, and I can see a pretty straight line between what they say and what they do on a daily basis. That would be the bit about the expertise.

Having renamed thought leadership to something more helpful, I think we need to put further guard rails around it, lest the same garbage leak out in its name. I’d like to propose that anything we put out there as demonstrated useful expertise be also credible, relevant, authentic, specific and sustainable (if you’re trying to find the acronym, it’s CRASS).

There is no shortcut to credibility

Just because someone in the marketing department survived 400 hours of YouTube about productivity, does not make your coffee brand credible on the subject. Hiring a speaker, sponsoring a conference or conducting a survey, doesn’t confer credibility either. Credibility comes from a ton of time in the trenches and a lot of conversations about big problems, uncomfortable truths and possible ways forward. It involves more than one person and it requires data. Lots and lots and lots of data. Not one of those skeezy Facebook surveys with 37 respondents, or the musings of your CEO’s golf buddies on the importance of mobile apps, it needs actual data. Good examples would include Edelman’s work around trust or Burning Glass on labour market trends.

Relevance is not about you

One of the problems with being in the trenches is your expertise can become very, very focused, which is fine if you keep it to yourself. If you are planning to demonstrate that expertise, however, you need to find a way to drag it into a place that other people care about, too. That’s why there are so many “thought leaders” when it comes to productivity, personal branding and optimal performance (I seriously don’t know what is).

Most of these people aren’t actual experts but they’re feeding the Bullshit Industrial Complex that feeds on an abundance of interest in such things. Relevance can be as broad or as narrow as you like, but I think the litmus test is whether or not your ideas or your data can be usefully applied by others who may lack your expertise. For example, Vidyard offers very helpful advice on how and where to use video in your business, whereas most other “leaders” in that space are intent on convincing you to buy something and then figure out for yourself how it helps.

Authenticity is not One Weird Trick

If the goal of your DUE is to sell things, you are on the wrong train. In the long run, sure, it’ll help sell tons of stuff, but its role is not get anyone to click the “buy” button; its role is to build your credibility as a useful partner for your customers, and that is firmly rooted in authenticity. Consumers can smell inauthentic, self-serving crap pretty fast. This would include almost all newsjacking (Life Lessons from the Olympics, anyone?) or tweeting about the importance of gender equity without first checking your own shop, or luring people in with One Weird Trick.

I just love L2’s authenticity in its DUE. This digital brand research company offers tons of free content, events and insightful blogs but on its YouTube channel, it takes the piss every chance it gets. If you haven’t seen L2’s irreverent, occasionally profane founder, Scott Galloway in action, you are missing out. Sure, it’s engaging and funny as hell, but what it really does is solidify this guy and this brand as thoughtful people trying to make things better.

Solve a specific problem

There is a wonderful career coach I know who is an expert in helping people figure out what they want to be when they grow up, even if they’re 46. She sells courses, consulting and a book to make money, but her DUE is pretty tightly focused on solving the problem of fear. Her strategy, in this case, is to freely offer demonstrated expertise about the paralyzing problem of being afraid to chuck that corporate governance thing in favour of a hops farm.

Her blogs, videos, speaking gigs and social media, mostly focus, then, on educating her target market about the specific problem of being afraid and why it’s both common and surmountable.

One of the things that vexes me about the big consulting companies, with their DUE on global trade, labour trends or market potential for beer branded onesies is they rarely take it to the next step, which is offering practical information on what to do about it (beyond phoning them). I think the hallmark of an authentic DUE strategy is to find a way to operationalize a solution to the problem you’ve identified.

A DUE is for ever, not just for Christmas

Perhaps the saddest thing about poorly executed thought leadership is the tiny, faint splat it makes when it ends. All that effort, all that money, all that planning, oh so many PowerPoints and meetings and the whole thing ran its sad little course in nine months and sputtered out. Sustainability is what sets a fun idea apart from a great DUE strategy. My favourite tool in this is a 24-month calendar. If you can’t clearly see at least two years’ worth of content, conversations and meaningful investment then you’re probably on the wrong track.

Another risk to sustainability is people. If your DUE is resting on the shoulders of one or two experts, you are probably in big trouble. A good DUE has not only buy-in from the Corporate Overlords, but active participation as well. It also needs to have a good number of lesser beings, in the form of SMEs (subject matter experts), who can help keep you honest on the technical side and step in to do a speaking gig or cough up a blog post.

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Author: Elizabeth Williams

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