Does thought leadership exist and if so, what is it?

A recent Edelman & LinkedIn study says that “A pandemic-induced glut of low-quality content is diluting the perceived value of thought leadership among B2B decision-makers” which is something we see a great deal of in our travels around social. Whilst Edelman have been very diligent in asking over 3500 management-level professionals who consume thought leadership to help marketers, communicators and salespeople better understand when to use thought leadership and what attributes B2B audiences want to see from companies it doesn’t get too the nub of the problem…which is that there isn’t much true thought leadership out there.

I think there is a more fundamental Issue though - just because it’s thought leadership doesn’t mean that it’s factually correct. I often find “research” which is masquerading as thought leadership (or advice) and is factually incorrect and little more than an opinion from the author based on their own prejudices, motivations and ignorance.

Edelman said that:

?“Thought leadership material refers to content - for example, thought pieces, essays, videos, webinars, live presentations, PowerPoint slides, and research reports that organizations make available to the public for free (or in return for registering or giving them your contact information).

In this context, “thought leadership” does not include content that is primarily focused on describing an organization’s products or services or thought leadership that you pay to receive — such as client deliverables, subscription services, or reports that must be purchased.”

By this definition any information or opinion that is free is Thought Leadership!

Surely though thought leadership should be the “high watermark” of critical thinking and topical advice on issues. Thought leadership should show people and organisations how changes in technology, behaviours, legislation etc. effect them AND what they need to do about it. This is seldom the case though.

We also see many reports from large consultancies (organisations that should be producing true thought leadership pieces) that simply are a collation of opinions from people who are seeking advice rathe than people with any knowledge and certainly no idea of the solution.

“27% of marketers said that they are planning to spend more on digital advertising in 2022 than they did in 2021”?

I fail to see how this sort of ‘insight’ is helpful to anyone except those who work in the digital advertising industry who now know that their market is getting larger.

This is rather like walking up to a crowd of tourists and asking them which way they think you should go to get to the town hall. They may have an opinion, but there is little or no correlation between ‘what they think’ and good advice or reality.

What we know is that business has radically changed (and this change has been accelerated by Covid), nothing new there. We also know that most businesses are still trying to apply old methods of marketing, sales, pipeline generation, HR, employee engagement, recruitment, procurement to solve today’s problems. These methods simply aren’t working.?

For example:

If your email campaigns are delivering less response, less engagement and less revenue today than they were a year ago (and the year before, and the year before that) the problem isn’t that you need to rebrand, or to buy new email marketing software, or to run more creatively sophisticated campaigns. The problem is that your prospects are behaving like you yourself behave (you don’t open cold emails and believe messages from companies you don’t know & trust) so stop trying to solve the problem by compounding the problem.

Once you have acknowledged that you can't address the problem in this way you can move on and find a way that will make things better. Whilst you are still grappling with where to buy your lookalike list or what time of day to send the email you will continue to be facing the same problem.

For me, thought leadership comes in two parts.

1. There needs to be a clear assessment and articulation of the problem that we are facing. Most reputable consultancies are very good at this, they all recycle the same messages, like “the buyer has changed and here’s the data to support that.”
2. There needs to be a solution and roadmap to solving the problem. Few of the consultancies that produce reports offer any solution to the problem, and this is partly because they don’t know how to solve it.?

A look at the digital behaviour of the individuals within these companies will tell you that their understanding of the solution is purely a theoretical one. Rather like my understanding of the importance of a fitness regime is purely theoretical because I’ve not been to the gym for years. They can talk about what they think needs to happen but cannot offer any advice on how to actually make it happen.

So next time you are looking for thought leadership content to help in form your decisions are you reading yet another statement of the problem or are you reading something that might actually contain the solution?