Thought Leadership Professionals - Role in Marketing

‘Should thought leadership sit in marketing?’ Our latest edition of the Collective Content Thought Leadership Jury had a decidedly tricky question, with 12 responding Jurors split firmly down the middle between ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. As Everest Group Senior Director of Content Marketing and Comms Will Sturgeon put it: “I suspect if this was an actual jury we'd be staying in a nearby Holiday Inn for the rest of our lives trying to reach unanimous agreement.” As part of our outreach for the series, we get a lot of comments and angles that don’t make the final cut. It doesn’t mean they’re not good. Today, I revisited two comments that touch on thought leaders themselves, often senior executives in companies, being responsible for output. Melissa Talago, Director of Editorial and Research at SHI, said: “I think if thought leaders themselves own it, it’s highly unlikely to happen except in rare instances where [they’re] trying to build their own platforms.” Agreed. Reliably producing thought leadership is rare if led by the thought leaders themselves. Answering our question du jour, Melissa was in the ‘Yes’ camp, as was Jury first-timer Jim Millen, Thought Leadership Content Manager at industrials group ABB. Jim noted: “Of course, in the messy reality of org structures, this doesn’t always mean that marketing has direct responsibility for all thought leadership – and the picture blurs further when individual leaders or experts become thought leaders through their own initiatives. But if marketing is disconnected from these efforts, that’s a red flag.” We’ll have our first AI-related Jury question coming up at the end of this month. Drop me a line if you think you should be in our Jury pool.