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A specialist thought leadership agency
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PODCAST: Interview with Rob Coveney, Head of Brand and Internal Communications, DNV GL – Oil & Gas
Jan 8, 201800:22:42Tap to summarizeThought Leadership Insights, Episode 8 Best practice in managing and establishing a successful thought leadership programme In the eighth episode of FT Longitude’s Thought Leadership Insights podcast, Rob Coveney, Head of Brand and Internal Communications, DNV GL – Oil & Gas, talks about best practice in managing and establishing a successful thought leadership programme. Rob shares his insights on how the company developed the DNV GL’s oil and gas industry outlook report, a barometer to assess sector priorities and sentiment. Now in its eight year, Rob discusses how DNV GL has ensured this initiative remains relevant and insightful for the market. We also explore how the outlook has advanced over the years, drawing on richer data and a widening portfolio of marketing channels to connect thought leadership with lead generation. Topics covered 00:00 Introduction 01:01 About the role 02:46 DNV GL’s Oil and Gas Industry Outlook Programme 03:41 How the programme has evolved 06:55 Segmenting the audience and targeting the thought leadership 09:01 Targets and outcomes of the report 10:21 Measuring these outcomes 12:30 Internal advocacy for senior stakeholders 13:28 The role of social media in low-level advocacy 15:56 Long-term trends vs. short-term insights 18:40 Recommendations in campaign planning 20:47 The 2018 programme Subscribe Listen to our other podcasts: Episode 7: Peter Richards on managing and establishing a successful thought leadership programme Episode 6 | Episode 5 | Episode 4 | Episode 3 | Episode 2 | Episode 1 Podcast Transcript Fergal Byrne: You are listening to the FT Longitude Research podcast: Thought Leadership Insights, where senior figures from the firm together with leading marketing executives explore key trends, shaping the evolution of thought leadership and marketing. I’m your host, Fergal Byrne. I’m very pleased today to introduce Rob Coveney to the podcast. Rob is Head of Brand and Internal Communications at the Oil and Gas division of DNV GL. Rob has managed DNV GL’s annual industry outlook, an oil and gas industry barometer, for almost eight years. In that time, this research has grown and evolved to adapt to a changing landscape in a volatile market. In this interview, Rob shares his insights as to how DNV GL has ensured this flagship Thought Leadership initiative has remained relevant and insightful over this time. How the firm measures success and discusses the importance of internal advocacy. So thank you very much, Rob, for taking the time today to speak to FT Longitude Thought Leadership Insights podcast. Rob: Thanks ever so much for having me Fergal, I look forward to speaking with you. Fergal: Yes, I’m very much looking forward to talking to you today about the great thought leadership programmes you’ve been doing at DNV GL, particularly the Annual Industry Outlook and various other research reports and surveys that you’ve been working on over the years. Maybe a good place to start, Rob, if you could tell me a little bit about your role at the company, and maybe also about the scope of the business. Rob: Yeah, of course, so I’m Head of Brand and Internal Communications for the oil and gas business of DNV GL. We’re a risk management and quality assurance organisation, working as technical advisors to a number of different industries, including Oil and Gas, Power and Renewables, Maritime and Life Sciences as well. We’re an organisation of around 13,000 technical experts, based in over 100 countries and our head office is in Oslo, in Norway. Fergal: So you’re Head of Brand and Internal Communications, Rob, what’s that entail exactly? Rob: So from the brand side of things, Fergal, one of the key elements of my role is to develop DNV GL’s position as a provider of foresight and insight to the industries that we serve. That’s really key for us because we’re an organisation of technical experts, we sell our expert’s knowledge and expertise. And so to come across in the market as an authoritative commentator, not just on technical issues that support the efficiency, sustainability, safety of the oil and gas industry in particular. But also to be able to come across as an authoritative commentator on macroeconomic industry trends, where’s the Oil and Gas industry going in the years ahead? It’s very useful for our customers, and it helps to build the brand position that we’re looking to achieve. Fergal: Right, now can you tell me a little bit about the Oil and Gas annual industry outlook? Rob: Yeah, so our industry outlook programme has been running for just nearly eight years now. The purpose of the research programme is to survey, nowadays, just over 800 senior oil and gas professionals, across the industry, across the oil and gas value chain, we use this as one of our flagship communications and thought leadership programmes for each year. The industry outlook programme is pulled together into a report identifying key trends for the year ahead identifying key trends for the year ahead, but it also goes much wider, it forms the backbone and the context for much of the media relations work we do as an organisation, many of the events that we attend as an organisation. So it helps to provide context to the industry issues that we help our customers overcome, and it also helps to position us, as I’ve said before as a key commentator on what we expect and where we expect the industry to be going in the year ahead. Fergal:Can you talk a little bit, Rob, about how it’s evolved over the past seven or eight years – that’s quite a while in the world of thought leadership and content marketing? Rob: Yeah, of course. One of the things that have kept the industry outlook perennial over the past nearly eight years now is the flexibility of the programme, the fact that we have been able to use it to help shape senior oil and gas professionals thoughts about key trends for the year ahead, in an ever-changing market. And over the past seven years, the oil and gas industry really has changed rather radically, and we’ve been able to reflect that in the research. We started the programme in 2011 with a key purpose in mind, and that was that we’d identified that we were very good as an organisation at technical thought leadership. So, for example, going to events, writing papers in journals that really look at the nuts and bolts of the industry, and how from a very technical and academic perspective we’re helping oil and gas companies across the value chain, to become safer, more sustainable, more efficient in their operations. What we noticed was that we didn’t have a position as a commentator at the macroeconomic level. We weren’t talking alongside our clients about key trends across the oil and gas industry, that we were expecting to see, and we felt that we needed to pull the two elements of thought leadership together and this is why the Industry Outlook Programme was important for us, at the time. We launched our first report in January 2011, and it was just some months after, I don’t know if you remember the Deep Water Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico, which had a large bearing, not only on the way that the industry was perceived, but also the way that the industry worked. We noticed that our clients and our customer’s patterns were going further up the hierarchy of command, I suppose. So more senior people among our clients were taking a greater interest in the services that they procure. Partially as a result of what we saw from that incident, and that meant that we needed to be able to position ourselves, talking about issues, alongside more senior clients, that we didn’t necessarily have to do before. So it was an ideal time for us to launch a research programme that really focused towards the c-suite. It’s evolved quite dramatically since then, if I remember back to 2011 we surveyed 120 senior professionals across the industry and produced a report on key trends based on that. Now, we’re just going through the process of surveying senior oil and gas professionals about what t...
Transcribe →PODCAST: Peter Richards on managing and establishing a successful thought leadership programme
Sep 29, 201700:10:27Tap to summarizeThought Leadership Insights, Episode 7 Interview with Peter Richards, VP of Marketing & Communications, Energy, Lloyd’s Register Peter Richards has been an advocate for the use of thought leadership within B2B organisations for over 15 years. Positioned in senior marketing roles at leading brands such as BT, CPA Global and most recently at the global engineering, technical and business services organisation firm Lloyd’s Register, Peter has introduced and successfully embedded thought leadership into the marketing strategy at each one of these firms. In this podcast, Peter shares his first-hand experiences of selling in and securing budget for thought leadership programmes over his career – including the challenges faced within firms that are unfamiliar with thought leadership as a form of brand building. Peter discusses the importance of managing and ensuring stakeholder investment throughout the process, and why, thanks to a greater awareness of the power thought leadership, there’s growing expectation to maximise the investment and ensure a strong ROI. Topics covered 00:00 Introduction 00:50 About Lloyd’s Register 01:30 Taking an issues-led approach to content marketing 02:00 Shifts in content creation and consumption 02:50 Audiences for Lloyd’s Register’s thought leadership 03:43 How an evolving market landscape affects messaging 04:45 The evolution of thought leadership content and how it’s used 05:55 Channels for activation 06:55 Advice on applying thought leadership to a marketing strategy 07:40 Investing in thought leadership 08:05 Success in thought leadership 09:10 How to measure success Subscribe Listen to our other podcasts: Episode 6: Rob Mitchell on Successful Thought Leadership Campaigns Episode 5 | Episode 4 | Episode 3 | Episode 2 | Episode 1 The post PODCAST: Peter Richards on managing and establishing a successful thought leadership programme appeared first on FT Longitude.
Transcribe →PODCAST: Rob Mitchell on successful thought leadership campaigns
Jul 20, 201700:17:12Tap to summarizeThought Leadership Insights, Episode 6 In the sixth episode of Thought Leadership Insights, FT Longitude’s co-founder and CEO Rob Mitchell shares his thoughts on what makes successful thought leadership campaigns as well as discussing how thought leadership fits in with content marketing. We also explore FT Longitude’s latest thinking on measuring the effectiveness of thought leadership campaigns, as well as future trends in thought leadership we can expect to see. Topics covered 00:00 Introduction 01:10 What is thought leadership? 02:20 How to distinguish thought leadership from content marketing 04:10 The relationship between thought leadership and content marketing 05:45 Can you do content marketing without thought leadership? 06:40 The current state of thought leadership today 08:00 Evaluating thought leadership 09:30 Making a campaign commercial 10:50 Measuring thought leadership 12:50 Mistakes people make with their thought leadership 15:00 How will thought leadership evolve? Subscribe Listen to our other podcasts: Episode 7: Peter Richards on managing thought leadership programmes Episode 5 | Episode 4 | Episode 3 | Episode 2 | Episode 1 Podcast Transcript Interviewer: Welcome to the podcast, Rob. Rob: Thank you very much, Fergal. Interviewer: We’ve spoken on these podcast about various aspects of thought leadership, about some of the research that FT Longitude has done. Today, it would be good to talk about what makes a successful thought leadership campaign. And I’m just wondering … a good place to start would be to talk about thought leadership and how FT Longitude sees thought leadership. And maybe, also, to distinguish thought leadership from content marketing, which … it seems in the market that terms are used interchangeably quite often and just some clarity around that would be very helpful. Rob: Yeah, a good question. So, I probably should start by giving our view what we think thought leadership is, because, you’re right, there are many different definitions out there. Depending on who you talk to, you’ll get a different perspective on what exactly thought leadership is. From our point of view, anything about thought leadership has got to contain original thinking. And if you haven’t got anything original to say, then you’re not a thought leader. The second thing is that thought leadership has to have some kind of call to action, it has to influence people in some way or get them to change their thinking or their behaviour. What I think is really important to add that thought leadership’s not just some sort of lofty, ivory tower activity. Ideas are really important, but it’s not just about those ideas. It’s really important to think about what you do with those ideas. People who do thought leadership well recognise that it’s got to have a very clear marketing rationale behind it. You’ve got to have a very clear line of sight into how your thought leadership is going to enhance your reputation, your relationships and your revenues. Interviewer: Interesting, that’s very interesting. Now, clearly, content marketing is a much broader term, a much broader area. What are the distinctions, do you think, worth making here? Rob: You’re right. There’s a lot of confusion, I think, in the market, about these two terms. People very often use them interchangeably. We’ve taken the view at FT Longitude to call ourselves thought leadership specialists. We don’t call ourselves a content marketing agency. And that’s deliberate, because, from our point of view, there’s a very clear distinction between the two. Thought leadership is really just one aspect of a much broader content marketing universe. I’ve talked already about thought leadership needing to be original and needing to be adding to the conversation. That’s not always true in content marketing, which, sometimes, can just be entertaining and there’s nothing wrong with that. But thought leadership has to be moving the conversation on, adding to it, generating new insight. I think the second difference is that thought leadership is all about quality and not quantity. If you invest in thought leadership, then you know that it’s a long-term game, it takes time and effort, it’s not something that you can churn out quickly. And you’ll also know that companies that do good thought leadership have only a handful of messages that they own. They recognise that there’s a scarcity of good ideas and they need to focus their message around those few key concepts. One of the trends that we hear a lot of, at the moment, is that companies don’t want to do lots and lots and lots of thought leadership campaigns. That doesn’t really work. They only do fewer, bigger, better campaigns. And that’s quite distinct from content marketing, where my view is that often the emphasis is on quantity and trying to bombard your audiences with messaging, in preview of search engine optimization rankings and just constantly trying to get front of mind with your audience. Interviewer: Very useful distinctions, Rob. Can you talk a bit about the relationship between thought leadership and content marketing, and how they fit together? Rob: I think the key point to make here is that thought leadership, as I said, is a subset or subcategory of a broader content marketing industry. To do thought leadership well … and I think you have to embed it into that broader content management framework. So, content marketing for me is all about the funnel, all about the content funnel and the buyer journey, where you’re driving people, your audience, down that funnel. You start at the top with building awareness and then you drive them through the interest or the consideration stage, the desire stage and the action stage of actually buying something, because content marketing is all about driving revenues and getting people to take some action and then, ultimately, selling. Thought leadership, from my point of view, occupies the top layer of that funnel, of that content funnel. It’s all about building awareness and credibility, but also starting to tee up that commercial conversation, because you’ve got to have that line of sight through to the commercial outcome you’re trying to drive. And then, as you get into the content marketing funnel that layers below, that’s when you start to get people into the consideration of your services, it’s when you get them thinking about analysing different offerings from different providers before they actually make the purchase. And those layers require a different type of content, and not so much thought leadership. So when you get into the consideration stage, it’s things like case studies, credentials, product webinars and so on. So, thought leadership for me occupies the top of the content marketing funnel, but it’s very much embedded into it, and then you drive people down through different sorts of content until you get that commercial outcome you’re looking for. Interviewer: Right, that’s very interesting. And I guess, on the other hand, what about doing content marketing without thought leadership? Rob: I think you can and you see lots of examples of this, you know, of content marketing campaigns that companies run. But my perspective on this is that you could do content marketing without thought leadership, but certainly in the B2B space you’re not gonna get noticed. You’re not gonna get the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise to your clients and you’re not gonna cut through what is a very, very crowded marketplace. There’s a lot of content, everyone’s trying to reach the same audience, everyone’s trying to communicate with the C-suite. If you haven’t got thought leadership, you haven’t got original thinking, original insights, then you’re going to get ignored. And you have to establish that credibility with your audience in the first place and that’s where thought leadership can help. Interviewer: Right, that’s very interesting. Now you’ve talked about the fact that thought leadership … one of the things that...
Transcribe →PODCAST: Parker Ward on content and thought leadership
Jun 14, 201700:26:54Tap to summarizeThought Leadership Insights, Episode 5 In the fifth episode of Thought Leadership Insights, we speak to Parker Ward, Global Head of Digital and Content at Capgemini, one of the world’s foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services. In this inspiring and engaging interview, Parker talks about his role as maestro of all things digital and content-driven at the 200,000 strong firm. He explains why thought leadership today requires new levels of strategic oversight together with digital focus, planning and rigour. Parker discusses in detail key factors essential to build a successful campaign, including content planning, formats, audience mapping and social media. Parker highlights the importance of good internal governance and gives his views on the always challenging question of ROI. Topics covered 00:00 Introduction 02:00 Thought leadership at Capgemini 03:15 Using thought leadership to create separation in the marketplace 04:30 The importance of critical analysis 06:45 Listening to the clients 07:45 How to find the relevant space 09:40 Tailoring communications for an internal audience 10:50 How social media fits into a campaign 13:20 Utilising internal advocates 14:00 Building trust 15:40 Measuring ROI 19:00 How to apply funnel marketing 20:45 Company culture and formality in the B2B space 24:00 Treating your audience as individuals 25:20 Upcoming thought leadership trends Subscribe Listen to our other podcasts: Episode 6: Rob Mitchell on successful thought leadership campaigns Episode 4 | Episode 3 | Episode 2 | Episode 1 Click here to read our step-by-step guide to developing your thought leadership strategy Podcast Transcript Interviewer: Welcome to the FT Longitude Thought Leadership Insights podcast, Parker. Parker: Thank you. Good to be with you. Interviewer: Yes, I’m very much looking forward to talking to you about your role at Capgemini, talking to you and getting some insights on how you approach thought leadership, and maybe also some reflections on the changing environment for thought leadership today and some advice and tips about how to develop and promote a good campaign. Parker: Sound like a plan. Interviewer: Tell me a little bit about your role, Parker. Parker: My current title is Global Head of Digital and Content, which is a pretty fancy way of saying that I manage the teams that run all of our websites and social media channels, as well as the content strategy piece for marketing. Figuring out what kind of content we should produce, how we get it made, and then how do we publish it in the right way. Interviewer: Right. Thought leadership has morphed, grown into, proliferated into content marketing, proliferated in different media and different styles of content. But it seems to be that the professional services consultancy companies, once upon a time, were really the leaders in this field. It emerges from their approach to communicate with clients and so forth. So this is clearly something that’s at the heart of what you do. Parker: Thought leadership’s a priority for us at the group. It’s something that I feel is a bit of an anachronism left over from those early days of business consulting. There is traditions, big POV, white paper, usually in a locked PDF format. I still see that, not only in my company, but across the industry. It’s a huge, huge piece of what everybody’s doing. Now we’re moving into an area where trying to unlock that process, maybe break it up into smaller pieces and then still try and approach our clients and partners and stakeholders and even our sales force with this great stuff that helps us with all of those relationships. Interviewer: Yes, and once upon a time, these would have been a report, a written report that was published and… Parker: Still is. Interviewer: in some cases uniquely. Now the underlying content can be used in so many different ways and the reports, to the extent they still are in PDF. Nonetheless, they’re often part of an underlying programme and these insights are parcelled and delivered in different media in different formats. Parker: Yeah that’s exactly right. Especially in a service business like this, we’re all just trying to convince everybody that we’re professionally smarter than the other guy. Interviewer: Yes. Parker: Thought leadership is absolutely crucial to creating that separation in the marketplace, maybe deepening a relationship that you have with someone, maybe just making somebody sit up and think a little bit. When everybody is trying to do that same thing, there’s actually a real dearth of actual insight. So we have to actually look at the delivery mechanism, by which we’re delivering that insight. The executive class is getting older and a new generation is coming in. That old-school, printed-out, read-it-on-the-train-home PDF format’s not gonna cut it anymore. One of the cool thing the Internet has done is given us what I call, “Infinite inventory.” There’s always another page to click to so we have to atomize that thought leadership into all of its smallest component parts and try and get it in these people’s feeds. That’s become big strategy for us, trying to figure out our production model and how we make that kind of stuff. Interviewer: At FT Longitude, we often phrase it is that, “great thought leadership relies on robust research, analysis, and critical thinking and not just opinions.” The danger is, for the marketplace, and certainly in the whole content marketing, that bits of half opinions part of data that actually…Can you talk a little bit about the importance of the critical thinking and analysis that goes into the thought leadership. Parker: Yeah, absolutely. We look at this a lot actually and it’s a bit of a cultural issue for us, to be honest. You have people who are absolutely brilliant in their field. As a consultant you’re paid to be professionally smart and they’re used to being taken at their word or their experience speaking for itself. But when it comes to content and an unknown audience who may not know you very well, who you are and what you’ve done is actually not as important as what you’re able to prove. My background is in journalism and editing, and there’s still the principle of, “If you’re gonna make a factual statement, you should have three corroborated sources to back it up.” The best journalist in the world, who’s been covering a subject for 30 years, they still have to do that every time they write something. Who they are doesn’t matter. What they write actually matters. We’ve actually done our own internal research to prove this back to our own organisation because we were getting a little pushback. I’ve seen it in other industries too. That said, people are interested in branded content, but you have to prove what you’re saying. You have to actually point to specific research that maybe isn’t your own. You might have to start getting comfortable with that. You have to bear it out. These short POV or opinion papers, I think a lot of blogging goes too far into this world, I just don’t think are gonna create that sense of trust or believability or even the separation in the marketplace because everybody’s got an opinion. That’s how we’re kind of approaching it. Interviewer: Right. It points again to the importance of this robust research and being clear what it is you want to talk about, in a way. What is germane linked to the objective of your clients. Parker: Yes. We always have to start somewhere. I think a lot of research just casts around, looking for anything interesting to say, but it you don’t have a pretty strong thesis there’s a strong chance you won’t actually go anywhere with the research. We spend lot o...
Transcribe →PODCAST: Alastair Gornall on building brand reputation
May 17, 201700:13:23Tap to summarizeThought Leadership Insights, Episode 4 In FT Longitude’s fourth episode of Thought Leadership Insights, we speak with former FT Longitude Chairman and PR maven Alastair Gornall about the importance of building brand reputation. Alastair shares his views on the current key trends in B2B marketing and communications, together with how companies should be using thought leadership and creative content as a way to increase brand awareness – and the vital role the c-suite has to play in this increasingly important area of focus. Topics covered 00:00 Introduction 01:00 Alastair’s background and the changing world of communications 03:45 Key trends in brand marketing 04:45 Using thought leadership to rise above the noise 07:00 The potential of thought leadership 08:30 How important is thought leadership to brand marketing? 09:50 How to create balance with your thought leadership 12:20 The future of FT Longitude Subscribe Listen to our other podcasts: Episode 5: Parker Ward on content and thought leadership Episode 3 | Episode 2 | Episode 1 Podcast Transcript Fergal: Thank you very much Alastair, for taking the time today to speak to us and welcome to the podcast. Alastair: My pleasure to be here. Fergal: It’s interesting to get a little bit about the background, you’re joining the FT Longitude team, Alastair. Alastair: I’ve spent most of my career building two award winning communications agencies that were public relations led, multidisciplinary, in terms of what we offered different clients, and then I was very lucky to spend six years running Reed exhibitions which gave me a very different perspective from a client point of view. And now, for the last six years, I have a non-executive portfolio career, which is a wonderful thing to have, which means that I’m now working with a very broad selection of media companies and I was approached by a head-hunter to talk to FT Longitude, who were looking for a chairman, and I’m very excited about this because I think FT Longitude is a fascinating business in a really intriguing sector of the media market. Fergal: Right. That’s very interesting. Clearly, the importance of communications in the work that you’ve been doing over the years in your entrepreneurial and leadership role. And I guess that world is changing a lot. Alastair: I think enormously. Certainly, I’ve been around a while, but if I go back to the 80’s and the 90’s and the 00’s, I think that the change in the style of communication was extraordinary. Certainly in the 90’s most of the campaigns that we were running through broad selection of clients from Disney and Virgin and Budweiser, et cetera, were about products and features. And of course nowadays the whole world is about influencing influencers. And it’s radically different than, obviously, with the social media, digital content, et cetera. Today, I think we as consumers, be it B2B or B2C environment, we cut through and see through false claims and hype very, very quickly – we’re not tolerant of that. We want credible, believable communications. We want companies who deliver what they say they’re going to do. We want companies who behave properly from the top to the bottom in everything they do, with all of the people they relate to. And the combination of all that is about the reputation of the business. So, as I said earlier on, reputations are destroyed so quickly now, and so it’s got to be embedded in every part of the organisation and the it’s got to be driven by the chief executive, who is ultimately the chief reputation officer for an organisation. And he’s got to understand that everything that goes on there is going to build up on how a company is perceived which will have a direct knock-on effect on that commercial success. It’s hugely important now, and what I find interesting, is that years and years ago reputation would be bedded somewhere in the corporate comms or the marketing department. But now chief executives realise it’s vital to the C-suite, everyone’s got a role to play, and if they don’t get it right they lose their job. So it’s a key KPI, I think, the link between reputation of organisation and the value of it. And it’s driven by the CEO who’s got the levers of power there to influence it. Fergal: You’ve had extensive experience in the world of brand marketing, can you talk a little about some of the key trends you see today? Alastair: Clearly brand marketing has always been vital to business. And it’s as vital today as it ever has been. I think the reputation of a brand or organisation is vital that it’s taken very, very seriously from the C-suite downwards. Because as we all know reputations are being destroyed so rapidly, and you have to take a very broad view of your brand. So even if you’re a supermarket, where you’re still selling products through it, how you treat your local communities you work in, to how you treat your staff, it all plays to the reputation of your brand. It’s become a much more complex world that we live in. People have to take it very seriously and it needs to be embedded in the DNA of the whole organisation, from the CEO down to the most junior employee. So it’s vitally important – it’s never been more important – but it’s much more complex now. Fergal: Absolutely. There’s been a proliferation of content marketing in various media and various formats, I think consumers of thought leadership are overwhelmed and this highlights the crucial importance that an organisation’s thought leadership is authoritative, stands out and rises above the noise. Alastair: I totally agree. And I think any major brand nowadays, especially in a B2B environment nowadays, is looking to be a thought leader in its own marketplace. And I think it underpins the whole reputation of that organisation in terms of its innovation, its product development, its ability to help solve issues and problems for clients. So it is a fast moving fast part of the marketing mix. I think it’s something where many organisations are doing an adequate job at how they develop thought leadership and apply it. Some are doing a great job. But there are huge gains to be got by getting it right and getting really robust thought leadership. One of the things I do is that I go to the most incredible conference. The largest gathering of CIO’s in the world is held every year in Florida and I’ve been to it for the last six years. And it’s fascinating to me how most of the exhibitors at that conference, the major technology companies in the world, thought leadership is probably the key thing they are all trying to promote, versus the features and benefits of their products. Fergal: That’s very interesting. The Harvard Business Review put it succinctly I think in a recent article; “The only sustainable form of business leadership today is thought leadership”. Alastair: Yeah, I totally agree. And as we all know it’s got to be very robust and I think one of the things that I’ve loved about what I’ve seen at FT Longitude is that they have a phenomenal pedigree in terms, where the founding partners, the team have come from, and it’s a very bright organisation with very intelligent, experienced people. I think the robustness that goes into the design, the development, the implementation of the thought leadership is something that is very impressive because you do see some thought leadership programmes brands put out, which, to be honest with you, are quite flaky and done by some student or somebody in a university. It may not be too robust, and clearly that will damage your reputation as a client if you do that. Fergal: Yes, I think some of the research that FT Longitude has done on thought leadership shows the consequences of exactly that. And if you’re insights aren’t robust, if they’re not drawn from proper statistical or foundations and analysis, that it actually can damage your brand. Alastair: I totally agree. Fergal: How well developed do you think thought leadership is i...
Transcribe →PODCAST: Alison Tattersall on thought leadership and marketing strategy
Apr 6, 201700:25:53Tap to summarizeThought Leadership Insights, Episode 3 In this third episode of Thought Leadership Insights, we speak to Alison Tattersall, Corporate Marketing Director at Barclays Bank, about the crucial role thought leadership plays in their overall marketing strategy. From digital-first and custom content, to smart activation strategies and essential metrics for tracking ROI, this rare glimpse into the world of global marketing at one of the world’s largest banks is essential listening for all senior B2B marketers. Topics covered 00:00 Introduction 00:40 Alison’s role at Barclays 02:50 Building trust for your brand 04:15 Thought leadership at Barclays 06:40 Short-form vs. long-form content 07:45 Marketing long-form content 08:50 What does a good thought leadership campaign look like? 10:40 Activation 12:20 Timely vs. quality content 13:45 The internal thought leadership process 15:00 Measuring the impact 17:00 Social media and thought leadership 18:50 Industry specific campaigns 19:50 Maximizing ROI 20:55 Internal insights 22:15 Responsiveness – attracting interest 23:45 Future opportunities from thought leadership 24:40 Making thought leadership relevant Subscribe to the podcast Listen to our other podcasts: Episode 4: Alastair Gornall on building brand reputation Episode 2 | Episode 1 Podcast Transcript Fergal: Welcome to episode 3 of FT Longitude’s thought leadership insights podcast. I am very pleased today to introduce Alison Tattersall. Alison is Corporate Marketing Director at Barclays Bank Welcome to the Thought Leadership Insights podcast, Alison. Alison: I’m delighted to be here, Fergal. Thank you very much for inviting me. Fergal: It’s great to have an opportunity to speak to you today to talk about the work that you’re doing at Barclays… maybe a good place to start would be if you could tell me a little bit about your role at Barclays and how it has evolved in recent years. Alison: Yes, of course. I look after the marketing for corporate banking at Barclays, which is everything from medium-sized UK businesses, right up to global multi-nationals. My role involves the full marketing mix. So, we do above the line, digital, we look after our client facing website and we do lots of content and thought leadership from quite in-depth research pieces, to short snappy LinkedIn and Twitter content. I’m lucky enough in my team that I’ve got both an industry and regional marketing team. So, I have a team of marketeers across the regions that we serve and also that focus on specific industry specialisms. And to me, the real nub of B2B marketing is making it really, really relevant. And showing our clients that we understand the communities in which they operate and the businesses and the sector that they serve and operate in. I think, in terms of how it’s evolved in recent years, my audience are getting younger. They’re getting more familiar with mobile. And I think there’s a real variety of needs and appetite that we need to serve, from really short insightful content, through to more in-depth pieces. I think it’s really interesting having this conversation in early 2017. I think the economy, the political landscape is so interesting and unusual and people are desperate for information and opinion from different sources and trusted sources, that to me it’s inviting that conversation and inviting that opinion and perspective and engaging in that dialogue with clients and with prospects. Fergal: That’s very interesting. You talk about building trust. Can you talk a little bit about what needs to happen for this promise to be realised? Alison: I think it’s a really interesting point. And I think it’s been really understanding, where as a branch you have permission to play and where you don’t have permission to play. And it’s really interesting. If I look at the content we’ve done over the last few months, things like the apprenticeship levy on modern slavery act have done really well, because people are looking for information in a trusted brand, which Barclays is – to have an opinion and perspective to help direct them. I know the best performing piece of content we’ve done over recent years has been our response to the EU referendum vote. So, I think it’s an ideal opportunity in the perfect storm that we’re in, is to actually have an opinion and perspective. But, also, don’t try and go too far from where your brand operates. I don’t think we’ve got permission to go everywhere and anywhere. I think we need to understand that, for me, I work for a financial services brand. I help businesses operate in the UK and around the globe. But I don’t have permission to go everywhere. I need to understand what my heart land is. Fergal: That’s a very interesting point you make and it speaks to the proliferation and the danger of thinness and straying into areas that you don’t have permission to operate in. How does thought leadership fit in, would you say, into the corporate marketing at Barclays? Alison: If I think about my team over recent years and also how I think it’s going to evolve over coming years, I think thought leadership is becoming increasingly important, both in terms of what we do and through digital, through webinars, but also what we do for our events. And my audience are really interested in events and opportunities and content that enables them to learn something and to engage in an interesting dialogue. Gone are the days of more hospitality focused marketing and it’s got to have some real depth and content and it’s got to add some real value. So, we spend a lot of time thinking about what are the really interesting things that are coming up. Changing regulation, changing climate, changing politics and how can we leverage that and provide that content. Fergal: There has been a proliferation of content – new types of content, new media- where does traditional thought leadership – white papers and surveys and rigorous research driven communications – fit in to content marketing at Barclays today, Alison? Alison: I think it’s got a place and certainly if I think about what we do here at Barclays, where we do lots of industry specific thought leadership. Whether your audience know an awful lot about their industry and they’re looking for real in-depth, detailed research and opinion and added value. But I also think there’s a really important role for content and thought leadership in parallel to that, that is more shorter. We did some work recently with a writer and they were doing some teaching and training with my team. And they came up with a lovely quote they shared with us: “Just remember your reader is selfish, lazy and ruthless”. So I think that we have to leverage new channels and social media to provide snippets and ready access to people on the move, on the go, who don’t have much time. How can we actually add value and share those snippets, as well as doing the more in-depth research at the same time. Fergal: Right. It seems for many companies today this in-depth survey & research content provides a foundation, a base that feeds this shorter, snappier, easier to access content, but you need to have both. Alison: Definitely. I think the more detailed research is really valuable, because it enables the perfect marriage of marketing and PR, because often journalists are looking for something that’s more detailed. You’ve also got the industry bodies and the KPIs who are totally immersed in their specific sector, they’d probably want that more detailed analysis. So, I think it’s how we leverage that and use the snippets and the more detailed. For me, increasingly, our focus is not on one and done, from a content perspective. How can we actually amplify that research and the more detailed in-depth thought leadership and get those snippets out. So, we don’t just do one piece of research. We actually leverage that through events, through social and we get much better reach and breadth through what we’re investing in. Fergal: Right, can you talk a little about how you amplify the more detailed in-depth thought leadership? Alison: We work with each of our industry teams and the PR team at Barclays to really understand what will be attractive to the sector, what will be attractive to the media for that sector and the industry bodies. And we work o...
Transcribe →PODCAST: James Watson on the power of thought leadership
Feb 15, 201700:12:45Tap to summarizeThought Leadership Insights, Episode 2 In this second episode of Thought Leadership Insights, FT Longitude’s co-founder James Watson reveals the key findings of the firm’s recent thought leadership research programme: The Power of Thought Leadership, exploring the major changes taking place in B2B and content marketing today. James talks about the crucial – and growing – role of thought leadership in building brands and reputation, explains how brands are successfully becoming publishers in their own right as well as what this means for B2B content marketers, and explores how companies need to tailor their content to meet evolving audience preferences. Topics covered 00:00 Introduction 00:40 FT Longitude’s thought leadership research 01:40 Research key findings 03:30 Companies competing with publishers 05:00 Growth in content 06:00 Thought leadership and reputation 07:45 New formats for thought leadership 11:10 Where do surveys fit in? Subscribe Listen to our other podcasts: Episode 1: Thought leadership trends and predictions 2017 Episode 3: Interview with Alison Tattersall from Barclays Podcast transcript Fergal Byrne (Host): Welcome to the FT Longitude Research podcast, Thought Leadership Insights, with senior figures from the firm together with leading marketing executives, explore key trends shaping the evolution of thought leadership and marketing. I’m your host, Fergal Byrne. In this second episode of Thought Leadership Insights, FT Longitude Research’s co-founder James Watson talks about the findings of the firm’s recent thought leadership research initiative, The Power of Thought Leadership. Welcome to the podcast, James. James Watson: Thank you very much Fergal. It’s great to be chatting again. Fergal: Before diving into details and specific findings, James, can you give me a flavour of what the research suggests? James: What stands out from this is just the very changing nature of the thought leadership marketplace today in terms of the evolving preferences and interests of audiences and what they’re looking for from high-end content and research. And if we think about it from the perspective of just how technology has changed in the last decade, this is really, really clear. I mean the iPhone was only released in 2007, so this is a relatively recent innovation – we’re not even 10 years into the era of real kind of pervasive smartphones that’s still developing and that’s changing the content preferences of audiences and how they look to consume insights and things like that. Social media is also a very nascent form of communication channel and continues to evolve too. And so it’s not surprising to me that we see that content consumers and producers often have some disconnect in terms of what they’re creating and what the actual preferences and interests are of the audience. One of the aspects of this research has been to delve into that a bit in terms of what these preferences are and how they’re changing and some of the challenges that that throws up for content producers today in terms of how they create this insight. Fergal: So what were the main findings, James? James: There’s about three that I’d like to specifically highlight from within this that, stood out to me. One is about the fact that today corporates, as producers of content thought leadership, are actually competing with the publishing industry and their audiences believe that the content that they create can be just as valuable as the content that comes from traditional publishers, which is a really important factor that underpins the growth of the thought leadership market and the trends underway. That’s one point that stands out. A second one that really stood out for me is around reputation and the fact that good thought leadership is a really important tool in building trust amongst audiences. And indeed, many of the respondents that we’ve polled think it’s now essential for B2B brands to be taken seriously. They need to produce thought leadership to do this. A third one is probably going back to this point about content preferences and how this comes to market. A lot of this might not be surprising, but what stood out for me is that while audiences clearly prefer shorter research-based articles and case studies and infographics, a lot of the more popular types of formats and things like video and, indeed, podcast like the one we’re doing today, are much, much less popular in a B2B format. This is really an interesting point to dig into because it reflects the sort of preferences that are evolving very differently in a B2B world to that of a B2C world. And yet, our view on this, which we can get into, is that any of these formats can be successful if they’re done properly and if they’re embraced with high-end quality, you can make any format stand out and become an outstanding success. And, indeed, you can make any format fail if you don’t apply the right quality to it. So those are the three areas that stood out for me. Fergal: Thanks, James. Maybe we can have a look at the first of these findings: companies are competing with publishers. What does that mean? James: This is a really important trend. Of course it’s well-known that the media landscape has suffered tremendously over the past decade as money from advertising has gone into online forms, into individual channels and publishers and become a much more fragmented landscape. But rising up amidst this is the reality that a significant number of corporates have become de facto publishers in their own right. They produce calendars of content, they regularly publish views on topical issues of the day and issues that matter to their audiences. And what’s really important here, our study shows that 74% of content consumers, and these are the senior B2B executives that we polled, agree that good thought leadership can be just as valuable from these corporates as content that has been published by traditional publishers. And I think this is really important because many corporates used to believe that the only way to access audiences and to get their opinion out there was to get their view into a third-party brand, a publishing brand, but this is showing that that’s not necessarily the case. You can have a serious and in-depth interaction with audiences with content that you are publishing directly and taking to market in that way. It’s obviously a tremendous opportunity for corporates to jump on that bandwagon and be involved in that. Fergal: This, I assume, in part, explains the exponential growth in new content that we have seen in the last couple of years. James: Absolutely! I mean it’s been a real explosion and there’s many studies out there. We didn’t seek to cover this in our research because it’s quite widely covered around the growth of the wider content marketing landscape, and within that content landscape the rise of what we call thought leadership, or more evidence-based content that’s underpinned with real research insights and findings underneath it. All of these areas have been growing rapidly in the past number of years and, I guess, social media is one of the accelerators or catalysts of that because it’s acted as something that has provided corporates with an ability to emulate the reach of traditional publishers. One of the reasons you go to publishers before was they had access to the audience that you may not have and you wanted to reach. Well, today that’s been much more democratised by the fact that you can reach out to audiences through social media. It’s not the only channel that matters. In fact, it’s quite a challenging channel, as one of our findings shows in the study, but it has helped to level the playing field. Fergal: Can you talk about the reputational aspects of thought leadership? James: So this was really something that really stood out for me in the study. There was a lot of findings around how thought leadership can help to build trust amongst audiences, and the fact that in the B2B space, this is a really important facet of how companies get taken seriously by customers. Basically, six in 10 content consumers agree that companies needed to produce this kind of content if they’re going to be taken seriously by customers. This makes a lot of sense to me because if you think about the way that many executives start to tackle topics or issues, many of them start reaching out and searching for insights and inf...
Transcribe →PODCAST: Thought leadership trends and predictions 2017
Jan 11, 201700:25:30Tap to summarizeThought Leadership Insights, Episode 1 In this first episode of Thought Leadership Insights, FT Longitude Research co-founders Rob Mitchell and James Watson, together with managing director Gareth Lofthouse, share the firm’s thought leadership predictions for the year ahead. They highlight six key trends from the company’s recently published 12 Predictions for 2017 that will impact the evolution of thought leadership this year, and identify key lessons and strategies to help B2B marketers adapt to these changing priorities. Read all 12 predictions, including tips on emerging trends in research tools, editorial techniques and tactics for audience engagement, here. Topics covered 00:00 Introduction 00:30 Rob’s thought leadership predictions 01:30 What is omni-channel thought leadership? 02:30 Are companies doing this? 03:30 Designing content for different channels 05:30 The issue of activation 08:30 Dealing with time pressures 09:30 Gareth’s thought leadership predictions 12:00 Measuring thought leadership’s success 14:00 Using intelligent content to drive sales 15:45 James’s thought leadership predictions 16:30 What is structured journalism? 18:45 Multi-media incorporation 20:15 Tackling content promotion challenges 21:45 Emerging technologies for B2B marketers Or read the full transcript here. Subscribe Listen to our other podcasts: Episode 2: The power of thought leadership Episode 3: Interview with Alison Tattersall from Barclays Podcast transcript Fergal Byrne (Host): Welcome to the FT Longitude Research podcast, Thought Leadership Insights, with senior figures from the firm together with leading marketing executives, explore key trends shaping the evolution of thought leadership and marketing. I’m your host, Fergal Byrne. In this first episode of thought leadership insights, FT Longitude Research co-founders Rob Mitchell and James Watson, together with managing director Gareth Lofthouse share the firm’s thought leadership predictions for the year ahead. Welcome to the podcast, Rob. Rob Mitchell: Thank you, Fergal. FB: What’s the background here for the predictions? RM: The background to these predictions is something we try and do every year, and it’s to ask the team that we’ve got here at FT Longitude what they see as the key trends in thought leadership, and what they see as the key changes that they expect to see over the next 12 months. We ask them to look at the whole range of different aspects of thought leadership from thought leadership strategy, to how research gets done, through to how content and research gets activated or launched to its intended audience. FB: What predictions are you going to talk about today, Rob? RM: I’m going to talk about two predictions. One is this idea of omni-channel thought leadership, which is a term that’s perhaps more familiar from the world of retail than it is from thought leadership. It’s an interesting concept that I’d like to share some thoughts about. The second is this idea of ideas needing better activation. We’re very used to seeing great insights coming from thought leadership. This is the idea that marketers need to focus more on how they take those ideas to market. FB: Right, that’s very interesting. Omni-channel, I guess we’ve heard it and seen it in implemented retail and financial services. What is it at heart, omni-channel, what’s the idea here? RM: Well I think the idea is about offering consumers or your audience a seamless experience regardless of how they engage with your marketing. If you think about it in retail context it’s the idea that you may browse for something you want to purchase in a shop, and then you go and research it online, and then you maybe buy it on a mobile channel once you’ve compared prices across different retailers. I think when it comes to thought leadership, you can apply a similar line of thinking. Until fairly recently, thought leadership was delivered across a fairly small number of channels. You’d be perhaps pushing out your content to an audience via email, or leaving a physical copy or report on your client’s desk, or maybe pulling them in through web advertising. But, as it is with retail, the world has become much more complex. Your audiences is now used to moving between different channels and formats pretty promiscuously. FB: Where are companies with this at the moment? RM: I think it’s still relatively early days, and I’m not sure there are many B2B companies that are offering a truly seamless omni-channel experience when it comes to thought leadership. I do think it’s the direction that things are moving. Following the way that we’ve seen this in retail as you pointed out, in financial services as well, marketers need to think about how their audiences consume content, and recognise that they’re pretty agnostic when it comes to channels, when it comes to devices, and when it comes to formats. They expect to be able to move from one to the other and have a seamless experience. But what I would say is I think for many companies at the moment, that experience is not very seamless. You may visit or look at some content online, and then go to another part of the website and find that the branding is a bit different, the messaging is a bit different. So it isn’t very seamless at the moment. I think most B2B organisations will probably recognise that and there’s some way to go. But I think this is something we’ll see more of in the next two or three years. FB: Right, that’s interesting. I can see the delivery aspect of it. What about when it comes to planning and design? Is there certain kinds of content that’s more appropriate for certain media, for certain channels, and is that important to think about that at the earlier stages? RM: Absolutely. I think that omni-channel is also about the content strategy, so it’s about having a seamless consistent message across all of your content. This is something that I think many became as they’re starting to think about perhaps again, they’re not quite there yet. So, in other words, when you’re thinking about thought leadership, when you’re thinking about your content, you need to think about the message you want to get across to that audience. Then you need to make sure that message is delivered in a seamless way across all the various formats and channels that you’re using from a marketing standpoint. FB: Right. Then when it comes to delivery, can you talk a little bit about that side of it? Does this mean that you need to have more IT people involved or does the process change? Have you any thoughts on that, Rob? RM: I think the first stage of the process is to work out where your audience is hanging out. So where are they consuming your content? I think very often companies don’t know enough about that. They don’t do enough research on what are the kind of ways in which their audiences consume content. Are they accessing it via social media? Are they accessing it via events, or email marketing, or web-search? There’s various ways in which they could be doing it. I think once you know that, then you can start thinking about how you build the content across the various channels that are most widely used by your audience. That gives you this idea of prioritisation because you need to focus on the channels and formats that are most relevant to your audience. Omni-channel doesn’t mean that you have to do absolutely everything across all channels, because that would be probably far too complex and far too expensive, quite frankly, so you need to prioritise and ensure that the audience you’re trying to reach is getting the delivery, and is getting the content, and the channels that are most suitable to them. FB: You talked also about a second prediction. You talked about this question of activation and this seems to be a burning issue I think for many content marketers. What’s the second prediction, Rob, that you’d like to discuss? RM: I think going back a couple of years, many B2B marketers would invest a large proportion of their budgets on the research and the content and perhaps not enough on the activation. What we’re seeing is a little bit of a re...
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