Thought Leadership is dead.
It was a victim of its own success.
The term became such an everyday phrase in business and in marketing that it quickly evolved into just another task to pass down the line to the social media manager, the junior account manager, and then the intern.
What was seen as a quality solution that met the need for founders, C-suite and CEOs to express their views and the publishers’ need for valuable content at no cost is rapidly becoming yet another lowest common denominator. I have seen pieces of thought leadership that are obviously the result of a comms manager’s bold AI experiments with Chat GPT or another Large Language Model.
If only a machine has done the ‘thought’ in your marketing content, then no one is leading anyone or anything.
I read a laughably poor op-ed the other day, voiced by a CEO and ghost-written by someone who appeared to have come across grammar just the once, perhaps in passing. It was in a minor general business publication, which had little chance of enhancing the voice and reputation of the said C-suite orator.
There was little thought involved and the CEO would have had more chance of establishing leadership by purchasing cider for teens outside the local off-licence. It was a waste of money for all concerned. If anything, the copy would have decreased any reputation the CEO had established to that point.
I have been working in thought leadership for many years, beginning before it had a name and it’s own bullet point in every weekly meeting agenda. The idea was to sit experienced journalists down with leaders and have them engage in the kind of dialogue that only quality features writers and interviewers can initiate.
The wordsmith could take the CEO or founder’s ideas and translate them for whichever audience they wished to speak with. The writer could draw out opinion, push boundaries, be okay with some pushback and create an engaging narrative that would be read in full, writing in the thought leader’s name to establish them as an important voice.
As the relationship between writer and leader grew, so the ideas and copy flowed, creating more opportunities and growing the reputation of leader and brand across newspapers, online publications, keynote speeches, awards and broadcast media appearances. The subject became more confident, more outspoken (in just the right way) and their reputation increases by a far greater value than their investment would suggest.
It is easy enough to persuade a client that they need to ‘do thought leadership’, as they are aware of the term (as is their marketing or media department), but PRs are often weighing the coverage thought leadership offers, rather than considering the quality of the publication it goes in, the heft of the writing or the readability of the text produced. It has become just more content. Just more KPIs delivered, badly.
The idea of thought leadership was that it could walk a thin line of op-ed and marketing material without ever looking out of place. But poor quality writing, poor quality publications and a ‘wave it through’ approach to editing is killing the usefulness and, importantly, prestige of the form. Initially, it was a great home for good journalists to show off their skills in collaboration with visionaries, C-suite and founders. It was a skill of translation, storytelling and, importantly, imagination. It was never supposed to be a press release in the first person.
There is some hope for the format and the term if we can wrest back control of the quality. But without quality control, actual thought and actual leadership we may be kissing goodbye to an effective and cost-effective form of business communication.
If you would like to explore genuine thought leadership that enhances the value of leaders, thinkers and founders then please do get in touch with me on iain@thisidea.co.uk.