Why I’m a Thought Leadership Curmudgeon

As I’ve gotten older, the things I see in the marketplace bother me more and more. Since there needs to be some benefit to getting older, I’d like to think that I’ve earned the right to curmudgeonhood. That said, here are a few things that I wish you’d just do differently.

• You call yourself (or your firm) a thought leader. That’s just chutzpah — arrogant, self-serving, and self-defeating. First, you don’t get to make the call, your audience does. When your audience sees you refer to yourself as a thought leader they react negatively — just like they do when you say you have the best software or the best services. Why should anyone believe you? Don’t self-promote.
• You don’t think. Well, maybe not you personally, but you publish content with no evidence that original thinking ever went into the creation of that content. Stop with the “me-to” marketing. Thought leadership is a competitive positioning strategy. That means you need to think up something better than your competitors. And that means that you, as the marketer, have to get some folks in your organization to make the effort to actually think.
• You don’t focus. You (well, again, maybe not you, but certainly your boss) want to be seen as the big thought leader – the IT thought leader, or the cloud computing thought leader. Well, if you have gazillions of dollars to spend, that might work (and if you do, please give me a call). But most firms need to focus narrowly on some aspect of their business so they can legitimately position themselves as thought leaders to win that business. That takes focus, a really clear understanding of your audience information needs, and a well-thought-out thought leadership strategy.
• You say we should stop using the phrase thought leadership. You claim it’s become overused, meaningless, a cliché, whatever. Well, all the alternatives I’ve seen are far worse. And it’s a perfectly good phrase that’s simply misused. So let’s define it clearly so folks agree, generally, what it means and use it right. Next thing you know you’ll want to stop using the word marketing (the same criticisms apply, you know).
• You call your white papers thought leadership. There’s far more to thought leadership than a white paper, or even a series of white papers. If you think that publishing a few items will make you a thought leader, you will fail. You’ll have to follow this blog over the next year or two or three to see what I mean.

If you agree with me, I’d love to hear from you. Or if you’re one of the folks I’ve described above, I’d love to hear how you’re going to change. OK, if you disagree with me, you can respond as well, but you better have a good argument.

More to come…