Public relations (PR) is a mainstay of any modern business strategy. So much so that you’ve likely never thought about the origins of PR as a discipline.
PR was an innovation in its day, and its origins lie not in marketing Coca-Cola or Ladies Fashion, but in the early days of the tech industry.
The first public relations department was created by the engineer and railway industrialist George Westinghouse in 1889 to publicise alternating current (AC) electricity. The first appearance of the term "public relations" was in the 1897 Year Book of Railway Literature.
The emergence of PR was closely aligned with the emergence of new technology, and even today, the most successful technology businesses rely on the reach and influence that PR can bring.
Over time PR has, like the businesses it serves, evolved. From its early beginnings building relationships with publishers and later, broadcasters, to what we call PR 2.0 in the digital age, encompassing social media and online bloggers and influencers.
In today’s attention economy, PR needs to evolve once again. To succeed in an age where many professionals have become de facto publishers thanks to platforms like LinkedIn, businesses need communications that leverage the insight and expertise of their people.
After all, people don’t buy from press releases - they buy from people.
At the same time as this shift in social platforms, media is undergoing a transformation. The pool of working journalists decreases on average 6% year on year. Publishers need content to attract audiences and thereby sell advertising space, but they have fewer staff to create that content. Increasingly, publishers are looking to industry thought leaders - professionals with a relevant, non-salesy point of view - to create content for their publications. Provided of course that content is editorial quality.
Prospective B2B customers want to know that the companies and the people they buy from understand their market and the challenges and opportunities they face. The company with the best diagnosis is often perceived as the company with the best solution.
The details of your solution, service or product benefits are better served as that prospective customer moves through the sales funnel, after they have already bought into your company’s thought leadership.
It is thought leadership - not product marketing or sales messaging - that draws people in and the best thought leaders start the customer journey by selling a point of view - not a product.
Indeed the stats from LinkedIn bear this out:
Thought leadership is highly engaging
Thought leadership drives growth
Thought leadership creates value
>> Discover the secret recipe for successful thought leadership.
We are often asked what’s the difference between thought leadership and PR. It’s a good question.
PR is used to create awareness and protect, enhance and build the reputation of a business and its products, services, solutions and achievements through the media. This is often done with the aid of communications tools such as press releases, which typically focus on milestones such as Mergers and Acquisitions, fundraising and new product launches.
Thought leadership is different. Although frequently placed as editorial content with publishers or posted online under the profile of senior executives, thought leadership creates awareness and engagement by focusing not on what the company is doing, but on why the company is doing it.
What trends are impacting the customer? What innovations are emerging to empower the customer? What insights do the executive leadership have, drawn from their experience and viewpoint in the industry? What is the cost of doing nothing, and what is the potential commercial benefit of embracing change?
Thought leadership is very different from a press release detailing the spec sheet advantages over a competitive offering - but executing it well delivers outsized competitive advantage.
Indeed, leveraging thought leadership is a key differentiator of company success. 81% of the 100 best-performing companies have a thought leader as a CEO. These thought leader-led businesses have created $260 billion of additional shareholder value compared to their peers.
Nevertheless, there are common barriers facing companies looking to kick start their thought leadership strategy.
Their PR agency or internal marketing team are not familiar with the very different requirements and rules of engagement for thought leadership. Their zone of genius lies in creating sales messaging or detailed product marketing - essential at the consideration or conversion stage of a customer journey but inappropriate for generating awareness.
Imagine for a moment being at a party and meeting someone for the very first time. If that person were to regale you with all their achievements and the reasons why they are better to talk to than other people at the party, you’d likely recoil in horror.
That’s why the best and most productive introductions - at parties, in life and indeed in business - come from finding common ground, sharing insights and through that building trust and rapport.
For this reason, thought leadership works well at the top of the funnel - sharing a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities facing your ideal customers. This requires a different methodology, different content, and different positioning from the traditional marketing and PR playbook. It’s PR 3.0 but very few PR agencies have evolved the way they deliver services, so their efforts at thought leadership sadly tend not to produce the desired result.
The executive team appreciate the value thought leadership can create but are nervous about the amount of time required by them to action it. Thought leadership may on the surface appear to be an individual accomplishment, but behind the scenes, the most effective thought leadership is usually a team sport, minimising the time and input required from senior executives while maximising the benefit to the company.
Very few companies have a budget line for thought leadership. Therefore it tends to fall into already stretched PR or Marketing lines. Rather than attempt to carve out new budgets for thought leadership, companies with successful thought leadership strategies have learnt it’s better to evolve PR and Marketing so thought leadership is not an added extra, but an integral part of the strategy and a lens through which every communication by the company is filtered.
At its core, world-class thought leadership content should drive awareness and consideration—whether that’s from technical buyers, C-suite decision makers, channel partners or shareholders and investors. It also drives other outcomes such as creating strategically valuable, higher quality PR opportunities, and enhancing the perceived value of your company and your products - and when integrated into the marketing mix, it can build your pipeline with qualified leads.
If you’d like to chat about upgrading your PR with thought leadership that drives hard business results, click the button below and let’s talk.
Sources: FTI Consulting, July 20 & LinkedIn, 2021