I’m listening to Jeremy Allaire from Brightcove present at the MIT Enterprise Forum – Brave New Web and the title of this post is a quote direct from his presentation. I’ve run into this meme a number of times in the past couple of months. David Scott has written much on being a thought leader, it seems like new ventures are taking this to the extreme.
For irrelevant marketing and messages, the oxygen is gone.
7 replies on “Invest in Thought Leadership, Not Marketing”
Hey John,
Jeremy is a successful entrepreneur – it is great to be in company with him!
Cheers, David
I was there as well and it was an interesting through from such a king of PR?
Thought Leader? What is that somone who has added value by leveraging their reusable assets?
Listen to see if you can hear our own Ronin Marketeer in this skit called “Business Babble.”
http://libsyn.com/media/griddlecakes/Griddlesode-020.mp3
Babble non-withstanding – there is a point to be made about doing something besides cranking out ads and brochures. Every marketing department should have at least one person that knows the product and industry better than anyone in the world.
An Emerson student and listener raised a good question:
What is a thought leader?
How are they different from a regular leader?
A thought leader is a subset of a complete leader. One who has the foresight to understand where a market is going ahead of everyone else may not necessarily be the right person to lead an organization of other individuals to that destination in a profitable manner.
Ah, so in older times a seer, a prophet, fortuneteller, etc.
Thought leader sounds… I don’t know, too “MBA-ish”. Like “leveraging synergy”.