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The Case for Thought Leadership

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Consumers are constantly bombarded with messages by savvy brand marketers in an effort to ‘engage’ at every opportunity. And the noise is deafening.

Targeting an audience is easier than ever before with no end of online metrics, analytics and geo-tracking to ensure more visibility of consumer preferences, habits and behaviours.

But what happens once you actually track down that elusive target audience? Do they know your brand? How do they perceive your brand? And, most importantly, do they trust your brand and the various values you espouse?

Enter Thought Leadership.

Thought Leadership, in its most basic, unadulterated form, is about offering a meaningful contribution to a topic, issue or discussion.

You need to take a leading position, make an impact and challenge the status quo.

You also need to implement authentic communication which will, in time, shape consumer perception of a brand.

But this won’t happen overnight.

You need a considered, strategic approach to build a profile, take a leading position and ‘own’ the conversation rather than just being an observer.

This continuous conversation must be supported by consistent and genuine messaging, and backed by research, by innovation or by the people behind the brand who are experts in their chosen fields.

All these elements, and more, are required to genuinely position your brand as a Thought Leader.

Marketing can put your brand in front of the right audience, but it’s up to communication professionals to ensure the interaction is meaningful.

RMKA’s expertise in developing Thought Leadership positions will enable your brand to build and sustain this interaction.

The Liberal Leadership and The Bligh Factor

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By John Kananghinis

The current Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and the fourth Governor of New South Wales, Vice Admiral William Bligh may be separated in their respective tenures by 207 years but they do seem to share a few ‘leadership’ characteristics.

Bligh (yes, the Bligh of the Bounty and progenitor of former Queensland Premier Anna Bligh) was a true master of his profession, an expert navigator, skilled cartographer and a highly regarded naval Captain who served, with distinction in battle, under Nelson.

He was mentored by the famed Captain James Cook and was Sailing Master of the Resolution on Cook’s ill-fated third voyage.

He seemed to be at his best in adversity. Many underestimated him and he lived to prove them wrong. When cast adrift in an open boat, with his small band of loyalists, by the Bounty mutineers led by his chosen first mate and a man he considered a friend, he completed an unthinkable 6,700km journey across the Pacific to arrive, with the loss of only one man, in Timor.

Years later, when the relatively new colony of New South Wales looked to be getting out of hand it was Bligh, known as a sound administrator and strict but fair disciplinarian, who was sent to clean things up. However, his confrontational style quickly put him offside with the colony’s power elite and then with his own troops. The result was the Rum Rebellion of 1808 that saw Bligh marched out of Government House in Parramatta and returned to England.

Bligh was described by some who knew him as an “enlightened naval officer” who had one or two faults. For example he would make “dogmatic judgements which he felt himself entitled to make; and he saw fools about him too easily … he never learnt that you do not make friends of men by insulting them”.

Do I need to highlight the parallels?

Prime Minister Abbott is no doubt a good and capable man, possessing mastery of the combative art of politics. Yet he seems friendless, unlikeable and now subject to ructions within his own team.

He was mentored by a legend of his party and was a faithful lieutenant to Prime Minister Howard even as the 2007 electoral rout became obvious to all.

Subsequently, when things turned a little pear-shaped, the electorate, somewhat reluctantly, turned to him but they have never loved him. And even if they did, as has been proved for millennia, the mob turns easily and quickly.

When the PM made his February 2 (post QLD electoral disaster) speech to the National Press Club he declared that government is not a popularity contest. In today’s political reality that is just plain wrong. Leaders not well regarded by the people will sooner, rather than later, be dispatched by their own side.

The PM’s Press Club address and subsequent interviews also suggest a lack of true understanding of the language of inclusiveness required to take the people with him.

It is difficult to support the claim of being more “consultative and collegial” when he keeps saying “my government… my plan” and referring to “what I will do for you”. Such paternalistic language perhaps betrays that his true view is that the people should leave it all to him as he knows best.

That may sound harsh, but use of language in leadership positions is very important when dealing with an ever more educated and critical electorate (or business workforce).

The PM’s continuing use of such language may suggest that he, like Bligh, cannot help but stick to his dogma and make the “captain’s calls” he feels he is entitled to make, even if they cost him his closest followers.

Inclusive language such as ‘together we will address the challenges of the future’ or even ‘as Australians together we will …” would certainly start to soften his image.

After all Churchill did not say: ‘I will fight them on the beaches …”.

In the end, even though his enemies underestimate him at their peril, it may all be too late for Tony Abbott. Despite the many good things his government has done, or at least begun to do, he may suffer the same fate as William Bligh on the Bounty and in New South Wales two centuries ago, i.e. cast adrift by those he thought to be friends; a great captain in a fight, highly skilled and intelligent, but lacking in the necessary common touch and flexibility to keep the rank and file by his side for the long term.

It may be that our current Prime Minister is closer in character to Admiral William Bligh than he would care to admit.

Moderation in all things, including democracy

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By John Kananghinis

If proof were needed that the completely adversarial approach to headline driven politics has triumphed then the results of the US mid-term elections provided all that was needed.

In effect the Republican Party that created a, some would say, cynical blockage of anything the Democrat President tried to do was rewarded by the electorate. In fact they ran a campaign promising to get rid of the broken system of government they created.

It helped that President Obama allowed himself to be wedged in such a comprehensive manner by lacking a cohesive vision that could help frightened electors make sense of an ever more complex world.

His single biggest policy has been the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare) but one act does not make a political vision for the future.

Whilst the Americans bemoan the state of their politics, back here we also run the risk of descending into a visionless constantly combative environment where ideas are sidelined and slogans, combined with attacks, are the stock-in-trade of two increasingly professional political tribes.

The current Victorian State Election campaign is being framed as a narrow plebiscite on a traffic tunnel, largely as a result of an incumbent state government that has failed to create any broader vision. That has allowed their opposition to hone in on one topic whilst at the same time claiming that the government has failed to address other important concerns.

None of this ridiculous and cynical political game playing progresses the public debate or benefits for the electors. The ultimate conclusion will be an increasingly paralysed, poll driven and an often wildly swinging from one side to the other government.

We can at least be thankful that the Australian electorate is generally centrist and does not display the extreme right or left leanings of other populations. That level-headedness is often portrayed by politicians as the innate ”common sense” of the Australian people, but give it enough time and we may well find ourselves in the same political morass as the Americans.

The rise of the professional political class paired with the relentless media drive to report politics as a blood-sport is a dangerous mix. There are some excellent and very well intentioned folk in both federal and state politics but heaven knows we don’t need more intellectual black holes– not looking at you PUP, or not PUP, Senator from the Apple Isle –  (or new Iowa Senator Elect Joni Ernst – you need to look her up to believe it). Equally we don’t need yet more union officials and former party advisors. The tribal warfare has to be taken out of the equation in the interests of the greater good.

Everything in moderation is perhaps a boring ethos to adopt as a guide to democracy but it is certainly one that may offer more productive outcomes than we have experienced of late. Trouble is there is hardly queue of life-experienced, rational, knowledgeable and politically pragmatic citizens stepping up to put themselves through the wringer of getting elected.