Thought leadership is a culture not a tactic

Guest post by: Craig Badings
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Your content will die if you don’t shift your paradigm - By Craig Badings

Thought leadership is not and should not be a marketing or PR tactic - rather it is a culture. Like companies who innovate, thought leadership too should be a way of doing things.

If it is not a function of corporate culture I can guarantee that most long-term thought leadership positions will not get across the starting line. Alternatively the company produces one or two 'thought leadership' campaigns a year that become part of the marketing team's annual list of objectives and kpis and are ticked off as thought leadership but are really just PR campaigns to drive coverage.

The true test of a thought leadership campaign is to ask the following six questions. Does your thought leadership campaign:

1. Add real value to your public's lives/decision making/business
2. Position you as a trusted advisor engendering trust in your brand as the leader in that particular sector/area
3. Help underpin sales
4. Provide a content rich platform from which you can write, talk, publish online and share with clients valuable insights
5. Position your people as the experts and 'go to' people in their field
6. Move your brand from product and sales leadership to market leadership and in the process delivers long-term, sustainable advantage over your competitors.

If not you should be going back to the drawing board.

In 2009 thought leadership trailed behind email as the area of most significant focus for B2B marketers according to MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog. If marketers are recognising the power of thought leadership and the management consulting industry has been using thought leadership as one of their most important lead generators for over a decade, why haven't other companies jumped on the bandwagon?

From my experience it comes back to the question of whether it is part of their culture or not. As I have indicated in previous posts, true, long-term, thought leadership campaigns need to align closely with the values of an organisation and needs to have the buy-in and ownership of senior management. Historically, the campaigns that do this fly and those that don't fail, or at best limp along, never quite realising their true potential.

Unfortunately the pressure on CEOs, marketing directors and the corporate relations team to produce immediate, measurable results is a big dampener on deep-seated, long-term thought leadership campaigns. The longer-term reputation and trust building resulting from this type of campaign does not satisfy the need for immediate results.

Ask any company which as at its heart a focus on innovation or research and they will tell you that the return on this investment takes years. A culture of thought leadership is no different but the rewards are immeasurable. Ask the multinational management consultancies, they know too well.

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Your content will die if you don’t shift your paradigm - By Craig Badings

About the Author: Craig Badings

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Craig Badings has spent the past 21 years consulting to small and large brands about their public relations challenges. He is a director of leading Sydney-based financial and corporate communications consultancy, Cannings. Cannings is a member of the ASX-listed, STW Group Ltd, Australias largest communications services group. In 2009 Craig published a book on thought leadership 'Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership'. He believes that thought leadership is an incredibly powerful yet underutilized communications tool which if correctly packaged can add tremendous value to your stakeholders and, in turn, your brand. He was a main board director South Africa's largest PR company, Simeka TWS Communications and a regional director of their Cape Town office. In 1999, he started Rainmaker Public Relations. After two years, Rainmaker was bought out by London-based PR multinational, Citigate and Craig headed up their PR division. One year before immigrating to Australia he was appointed managing director of Citigateï¿½s Cape Town PR, advertising and design agencies. In 2003, he moved to Australia and joined the Gavin Anderson Melbourne office. In 2004 he started his own business and in 2005 joined one of the Ogilvy Public Relations Australian sub-brands, Savage & Partners in Sydney. Savage & Partners merged with Cannings in February 2009.
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