Comments on: Thought Leadership Alone Is Not Enough

By: Alena Hitzemann

Alena Hitzemann — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:13:08 +0000

Dana,
Thanks for the excellent post. Our thought leadership program is just starting to embrace the social media piece, and like you, I believe it will make a huge impact on its success. I love your three-legged stool analogy- without any of the components that you’ve addressed, thought leadership will never reach its full potential.

By: Dana VanDen Heuvel [from MarketingSavant]

Dana VanDen Heuvel [from MarketingSavant] — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:20:23 +0000

Paul,
Yours is an excellent point. Political candidates do typically have access to substantial war chests. That said, I think that there are a couple of ’small company examples’ and a couple of points worth noting.
1. When I talk about insurgent marketing, it’s as much about holding the ‘mindset’ of an ‘insurgent’, which anyone has access to, as it is about employing the techniques, whether you use all of them or not. It’s not unlike Jim Collins and Good to Great. Many of the companies profiled are large enterprises, but the concepts can be employed by organizations of most any size.
2. I think of organizations like Clif Bar and PowerBar that have changed the world of what athletes eat (we used to just run around with bananas…). These are insurgents, even if they didn’t employ every strategy (or have the need to), they had the mindset.
3. Some of the brands profiled in the book “The Underdog Advantage”, where the insurgent marketer idea comes from, are Ben & Jerry’s, Nokia, Google, Krispy Kreme, Linus, Patagonia and others. These are all large brands now, but they started quite small, or in totally different industries than they’re in today. Being insurgents has helped them stay alive and thrive.
4. In terms of small brands that are employing insurgency, I can think of a local bank that’s doing so, Odwalla, the beverage company has always played as an insurgent, and there are likely many other small brands around the country using the principles.

By: Dana VanDen Heuvel [from MarketingSavant]

Dana VanDen Heuvel [from MarketingSavant] — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:06:15 +0000

Courtney,
You’re absolutely right, it’s reached buzzword status. I guess I was coming at it from the point of view of someone who runs into company leaders every day in my practice who’ve never heard of, or if they have heard of, don’t understand the concept.
Sales people should rarely every use the words ‘thought leader’. If you’re a genuine thought leader in your industry, by the time your sales person sits down with a prospect, they should hardly have to explain this position.

By: Dana VanDen Heuvel [from MarketingSavant]

Dana VanDen Heuvel [from MarketingSavant] — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:03:03 +0000

Spike,
Point taken (have we had this conversation before?) but I submit that thought leaders, if they’re true thought leaders, have put a significant amount of ‘action’ into their plan already. They’ve dived deep into customer challenges to understand the industry, corralled their internal intellectual resources and existing work to showcase their ability and then taken the leap to publish their point of view and serve as an educational resource to their marketplace.
The real thought leaders possess knowing + doing as a core competence.

By: Spike Jones

Spike Jones — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:20:22 +0000

Nice post, Dana.
Thought leadership is great. But you know what’s even better? Thought leadership + action leadership = best practice. And nothing beats that.

By: courtney benson

courtney benson — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:35:11 +0000

Dana - very nice article and on point but "thought leadership" or thought leader anything IS a buzz word and has been around for such a long time that it now qualifies as one of 11 Stupid Sales Cliches http://tinyurl.com/575z3d

By: Paul Barsch

Paul Barsch — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:14:46 +0000

Dana, I’m intrigued by the discussion on insurgent marketing. You mention that political candidates make much use of these strategies, but in the next few sentences you say these strategies favor the small, agile competitors. Most political candidates (statewide and beyond) have sizeable budgets to change/control the dialog. Small companies don’t have such luxuries. Please elaborate with some examples of small companies adopting such strategies; a case would be great.
Thanks!