Marketers need to understand thought leadership

About 10 years ago I was working with a financial services company newly launched in the UK. They had neither money nor experience to advertise but did have an asset management approach for pension funds that was unique. It happened, to their great good luck, to coincide with an immense amount of activity in the pension market – closing final salary pensions and implementing an influential government commissioned report, which contained major criticisms of the way pensions were managed. It occurred to me that research among CFOs (identifying strengths and weakness in the existing procedures) could form the basis of an awareness campaign, as my client’s approach remedied many of these concerns. I plucked a phrase out of the air – thought leadership – that the client loved: his company was to be the thought leader in the pensions market.

So, along with a PR company specialising in pension management PR, we were able to build a reputation by regular editorial reporting of research findings which we conducted at every possible opportunity – some 15 in all over 3 years. Having spent most of my career in FMCG advertising markets, I hadn’t realised that ‘thought leadership’ was a well-known concept.

One of my most valued editorial board members Laurie Young, who died recently, cornered me several years ago to point out that thought leadership – of a much more sophisticated sort then the simple experience I had managed – was not only a widely used practice but, most interestingly, was absent from any marketing textbook or academic journal.

This spurred him to embark on an extraordinarily thorough trawl through the literature to bring the idea of thought leadership into marketing practice. The current issue of Market Leader has an extract from his book that explains just how powerful thought leadership can be. A colleague of his, Bev Bugess, has also contributed an article on how it is used in practice in the technology and professional services sectors. 

The digital age is profoundly shifting the marketing paradigm as we grapple with the multitude of different channels and vehicles through which messages can be sent.  But that in itself is old paradigm thinking - that messages can be pumped out to people, the only difference being the number of channels available.

The importance of thought leadership is that it doesn't rely on discrete messages as such, but has the ability to influence the whole context in which the company or brand operates. And here we can see with the Dove example just how sophisticated and powerful a thought leadership programme can be with a traditional FMCG brand. Using a mixture of all available communications tools, plus websites and literature, a programme can go further than just associating a brand with a social attitude. More significantly, it enables the brand to own the social attitude/belief system itself. This is the most powerful type of discriminator a brand or company can have.

As many have observed, successful consumer companies and brands are increasingly linking themselves with bigger and aspirations and ideas. The power of word of mouth enabled by social media and the increasingly complex social networks that people are engaged in is becoming a significant force in marketing. Marketers need to understand the potential of thought leadership programmes as an effective additional weapon in their armoury.

Read more from Judie.