Everyone wants to give you highfalutin advice about thought leadership for brand activation. Well, not every white paper is going to reinvent your company, but - as in this real-life story - it had damn well better make you stop and think.

1. By Mike Azzara, Chief Content Strategist, Stein + Partners Brand Activation
Now That’s Real Thought Leadership!
I came across a blog post yesterday about whether your content is really supporting your
thought leadership–in other words, is it really activating your brand? It talked about the
need to present bold, new ideas, take a stand with a clear point of view, reflect high-
quality research, and look to the future. All good advice.
But I won’t link to it because the author didn’t ever bother to mention putting the needs
of your target audience at the center of all your work. And you have to say that, every
time, when you talk about content marketing and thought leadership. But I digress.
The blog post reminded me of the second-most-impressive thought-leadership project
I’ve ever worked on–and trust me, target audience, you need to hear this story, even
though I can’t name the client or the topic (or they would have to kill me).
It was for a household-name professional services firm I’d worked for off and on for
many years. In mid-2010, the company realized there was a fundamental change
occurring in one of the most important industries it served, and it needed to produce a
thought-leadership piece that would take it from the middle of the pack among its peers
(at best) to the lead. Your humble author drew the assignment.
Working with an internal partner, we interviewed roughly two dozen–no kidding–
subject-matter experts from across the firm, all identified by the practice leader. Here’s
the thing: Even though the firm knew this fundamental change was about to sweep
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question the short list of internal experts to try to really understand these winds of
change.
The 56-page synthesis we produced by combining insights from those internal interviews
with reams of third-party research included an overview and nine separate sections
exploring the impact of the coming revolutionary changes on pricing, business models,
supply chain, security, the role of government regulators, and international tax and
accounting. Each section was also offered as a standalone paper. And we delivered
internal and client-facing sales decks and webinars.
And when we were done . . . the practice leader dumped the whole package in the deep
freeze for a full year.
Turns out the firm’s experts were smarter than they thought. Our synthesis of their
insights led senior execs to identify strategies and tactics that their organization was not
yet prepared to pursue. They planned, re-engineered, and went to market almost a year
later.
Not every white paper is going to reinvent your company. But if you want thought-
leadership content capable of intriguing your target audience and activating your brand, it
has to be provocative or insightful enough to make you stop and think. Read through this
post again and think about the level of effort and commitment that requires.
Read more: http://www.cmo.com/branding/now-s-real-thought-
leadership#ixzz1uUFQxWic
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