• Bad branding
• Competitiveness and the City
• New look legal marketing in the UK
• Cloud needn't be a marketing nightmare
• Up, up and away
• Putting a value on corporate reputation
• Policing Bloggers
• I know my customers – perception or reality?
• Does the US media need a bailout?
• Online Annual Reports – a review of current activity among FTSE100 companies
• The Content Generation
• Typing out a change of personality
• Companies caught in the commission of journalism
• Reputation Rehab
• Cut out the jargon
• Sibos viewpoint - Thursday 17 September
• Regaining our seat at the table
• Sibos viewpoint - Wednesday 16 September
• Sibos viewpoint - Tuesday 15 September
• Sibos viewpoint - Monday 14 September
• Thought leadership is not for the risk averse or misaligned
• David Byrne - An impetus for change
• The Great Escape
• Frightening MBA advertising?
• The curse of the Were-Designer
• Banking on effective communication
• The corporate newsroom amid a web of excited utterance
• It’s not what you say it’s the way that you do it
• Slow down and think
• Spreading the word
• Silver linings?
• Design and Technology
• Papercut: How Companies Can Combat A Weakening Mass Media
• CNBC and Jim Cramer Underestimate the Influence and Reach of Social Media

Thought leadership. 

It is perhaps one of the most overused phrases in our industry.  We find ourselves constantly challenging clients to avoid telling us how shrewd, responsible or innovative their organizations are. Show us.

This “show, don’t tell” approach is not easy. However, when well executed, it can be an extremely powerful exercise with tremendous bottom line impact.

So, what does it mean to be a thought leader within today’s economic, political and communications environment?

It means you must be willing to embrace some form of risk. Stakeholders today expect dialogue and the advent of new media tools have made feedback mechanisms the norm. Leveraging traditional and new media channels as a means to establish a thought leadership position will result in a dialogue that is impossible to control and difficult to influence.

It also means that you must be bold. The phrase itself implies that you are willing to embrace a position that is counterintuitive, go against the grain of popular opinion or, at the simplest level, develop and share information that is unique, interesting and impactful. This requires bold thinking and quick (but not hasty) action.

Embracing risk and being bold will not ensure a successful thought leadership position without another key element: alignment. Your organization’s thought leadership position must align, logically and intuitively, with the essence of your brand, your organization’s ethos.

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, is the most recent example of how quickly and effectively stakeholders can create a groundswell of opposition against a thought leadership position, thus illustrating the risk inherent in being a true thought leader.

Instead of engaging in a political debate fraught with rhetoric, Whole Foods could have taken a much different and more effective tack by aligning an alternative position on healthcare reform with his organization’s outstanding reputation and record in this area.

Mackay is obviously no stranger to risk and was certainly bold, but his thought leadership position lacked alignment and has thus been derailed by political rhetoric and backlash.  Today, the organization finds itself backtracking from what could have been a powerful thought leadership position. The potential was there, but the alignment was not.

Aaron R. Schoenherr
aschoenherr@greentarget.net