Jumpstart 2019 Thought Leadership Campaigns: 6 Ideas to Brainstorm

It’s January 2019 and your CMO or that high-profile VP with lots of ideas wants to know what the thought leadership campaign looks like for the year. Do you have one? Here are six ideas to start your brainstorm.

What follows is not really a pronouncement on individual technologies, people or events. My goal here is to demonstrate how seemingly concrete events and trends actually create a much larger context in which thought leadership is not only possible but needed.

Artificial Intelligence: The Untold Story

Artificial Intelligence will be very much in the headlines in 2019, much like 2018. The technology is already in our lives and notions of it being a cure-all for what ails us or a dire threat to humanity, or the core of a new nationalist competition in geopolitics will be inescapable. 

Your customers are seeing all these headlines and wondering what it means for them. Your competitors are also gaining access to AI. While it might already seem like a long time ago, Amazon Web Services announced a broad portfolio of AI and machine learning services in November for companies who use their cloud. Google and Microsoft are also building out AI as a service. Even if your customers don’t know exactly how they might use AI at the moment, they will increasingly want to know what their vendors and platform providers are thinking. How might AI affect your space? What could your customers automate? If you need some grist for the brainstorm preparation, check out this video from technologist, anthropologist and all-around incredible person Genevieve Bell.

Human hand robot hand connecting at computer control panel
Artificial Intelligence will continue to dominate the headlines in 2019.

Moore’s Law: The letter and the spirit

Moore’s Law, the engine of the technology industry, has died a thousand deaths over the years, but now seems legitimately on life support. The amount of new science, capital investment and sheer trial and error required to continue doubling transistor density on chips simply can’t be done in two years anymore. We’ve been so successful shrinking things that engineers grow concerned whether we have enough available atoms to hold a charge in a logic gate or memory cell. We’re hearing more about quantum computing and its QuBits as an alternative and it sometimes sounds like AI (see above) is supposed to rescue us from the end of technological history.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that the global economy is not going back to carrier pigeons and an abacus. Companies like Applied Materials have been creating new magic with unique manufacturing processes and novel materials from the periodic table of elements to keep this juggernaut moving forward without direct transistor shrinkage. New structures and architectures like neuromorphic computing are progressing. And there are new chip startups dedicated to AI accelerators bringing a refreshingly new hardware component to our AI fascination. With all that said, things need to change in light of the letter of Moore’s Law no longer applying. The spirit of Moore’s Law – things get better over time if you understand how it all works – offers ample space for thought leadership that will be needed in 2019 and beyond. What has Moore’s Law meant in your industry? Where does improvement come from going forward?

Dear, we need to talk about Mark…

…and Sundar. Maybe Jeff.  But, definitely Mark. It takes no insight to predict that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and other tech executives will be grilled by some governmental panel sometime in 2019 because raking Wall Street execs over the coals is just soooo 2010. Hopefully, the questions will be more useful than those asked in 2018 that often sounded like: “What happened to the cupholder that used to pop out of my granddaughter’s computer?” Tech fear over privacy erosion, political manipulations (real and imagined) and a growing discomfort of life-by-algorithm will continue in 2019.

As Facebook, Google and others face this scrutiny the opportunity grows for others to strike a thought leadership position reclaiming some of the positives of an earlier view of technology. Apple’s Tim Cook is already opening this space with Microsoft’s Satya Nadella making forays as well. The field is wide open and will paradoxically expand as the giants take heat. One crucial factor is that your claims must possess what I call “the added advantage of truth.” When you make a claim that you’re protecting privacy or enhancing security with a program or innovation, be sure you are not setting yourself up for a future mea culpa like a certain social media giant seems to do frequently.

Map of San Francisco Bay Area with Silicon Valley flag pin
In San Francisco and Silicon Valley, a six-figure salary is considered low income.

New tech centers beyond the valley

News flash: A family of four living in San Francisco making a six-figure salary can still be classed as low income. Yup, Silicon Valley is an expensive place to live, a fact that was noticed by the media in 2018. So digital innovation is setting down roots elsewhere. Apple is investing a billion or so dollars in my backyard here in Austin. Other, smaller players are shifting out of Silicon Valley to new places with available talent, quality of life, and a mortgage that doesn’t require an IPO to pay off. Seattle has its own problems as Amazon’s hunt for a new headquarters exposed.

But, you knew all that. The storytelling here has been largely driven by math: population density, housing prices, etc. What we haven’t talked enough about yet is what it means as this digital diaspora spreads around the country and the world. Let’s be clear that Silicon Valley will continue being Silicon Valley. But, companies are planting their flags elsewhere. We could use a public conversation about what it means when a similar innovation clustering effect enters third or fourth tier cities. What does it mean for local communities or the education system? What cascading effects happen: Do travel patterns change? Does the food industry have to respond in some fashion? As a society we need thought leaders to cultivate these conversations. 

Just be-cause

One of the most profound changes in business – that is still not fully appreciated in many boardrooms or business schools – is that society is now a stakeholder with a seat at the table. And members of that society make up your customer base, your prospect list, your employees, your investors – and any other audience you possess. Researchers suggest that you won’t be able to attract millennial generation workers if you don’t act on your values. To put it bluntly, we increasingly expect companies to wade into controversial topics and take stands on the issues of the day. This goes beyond Corporate Social Responsibility or cause marketing. Call it social accountability.  Is this fraught with peril? Absolutely. Let’s stipulate this is not for the faint of heart. But, it can be a source of differentiation via thought leadership.

How might you go about selling this as a strategy?  The truth is your organization can be pulled into an issue if you aren’t paying attention. Are you following Netflix’s canceling of a show in Saudi Arabia? Who knew Netflix was supposed to conduct foreign policy, but apparently they are accountable for it. Ditto Google and government work or Chinese cooperation. Picking an issue or arena where you will establish a thought leadership platform gives you as much control as you’re likely to get in these crazy times. Remember, the NFL woke up one morning and found itself part of the culture war. Conversely, did you see Nike’s Colin Kaepernick ad? Controversial? You bet. Did you see the numbers Nike put up afterward?

Leonardo Da Vinci engineering drawing from 1503 on textured background.
Leonardo Da Vinci engineering drawing from 1503.

History as prologue

With so much news drowning us every week it’s difficult to find meaning in things before the next headline knocks you off kilter. Your audience might well appreciate a chance to see the past as a point of departure for considering the future and 2019 provides some historical anniversaries to build meaning around. 

For instance, Leonardo Da Vinci died 500 years ago. It’s easy to get lost in Mona Lisa’s smile, but Da Vinci was also a thinker and inventor. Art and science were not mutually exclusive topics in his day (nor should they be today). He worked in medical science and postulated things like helicopters proving that innovation comes in many forms and from many places. If the renaissance isn’t your thing, consider that many thinkers are talking about AI as a 4th Industrial Revolution. That means there are three others that we might look to for guidance or models we can adapt to something happening today. Looking to tap into populist waves without the current baggage associated with them? This year Mahatma Gandhi turns 150. Get out of your 21stcentury mindset for a bit to find something in the past that provides a new lens through which to view something happening today.

Thought leadership trends 2018

Are you tired of 2018 Trend posts yet? Hope not.

This blog will differ from some of the other trend forecasts in meaningful ways, however. This post is about what 2018 might sound like when we listen to visionaries, read thoughtful blogs or experience the best of content marketing. Forecasting thought leadership trends is not the same as proclaiming that specific events will happen; though you can extrapolate various events from what follows. Various technologies provide the foundations of several items below, but the point to glean here is not really about those technologies per se. Whether any one of the technologies mentioned below hits concrete milestones in 2018, the ideas they represent hold the power to shape how we talk about the world.

These will be ideas such as:

The “Era” Era

When your visionary CEO is on a big stage somewhere, a common template frames that speech by tracing different “eras” through which a company/industry/discipline has passed on the way to the speech’s big reveal – “The New Era in the Title of this Speech.” The classic model for this is in the technology industry where the progression from “mainframe to PC to mobile” eras is well documented and possesses the added advantage of truth. As artificial intelligence (AI) broadens its footprint and headlines breathlessly foretell its impact, this new-era template will receive a steroid injection across industries and disciplines.

Everyone will have an argument to make that AI changes their game to such a degree that a new era is upon them.

AI’s theoretical ability to find patterns in voluminous data, automate tasks for which we previously thought humans were needed and – more importantly for our purposes here – provide a compelling ghost in the machine will empower thought leaders to proclaim new eras for just about anything. Everyone will have an argument to make that AI changes their game to such a degree that a new era is upon them.

The crucial thing for thought leaders to remember in this era of era proliferation is to maintain the intellectual integrity of that historical view and the “added advantage of truth” that will differentiate their claim of a new era.

Generational change – hunting the post-millennial

On a tangentially related note, the new year might also be the starting gun in proclaiming the advent of a new generation’s influence (and could be part of identifying a new “era” if you have a speech coming up). In 2018, those born first in the 21st century will reach the age of majority (and yes, I’m ignoring the argument over whether the first official year of a century ends in “0” or “1”). The BBC has gone so far as to suggest that we drop the term “millennial” because, well, focusing on that group just seems sooooo 2015. You can already find this cohort referred to as Generation Z. Giving them a better name is low hanging fruit for thought leadership; but to be sustainable as a thought leadership pillar, that new name will have to draw on identifiable characteristics of those graduating high school in 2018 and make some larger meaning out of those traits. It’s a rich landscape given that this group effectively doesn’t remember a time before smartphones or Netflix and is unlikely to find the term “artificial intelligence” to be exotic by any means.

Brother, can you spare 5Gs?

5G wireless technology will hit its visionary stride in 2018 as early pilots of the device-side radio spec get going. The full deployment of 5G’s promise is still a few years away. But, that promise – ranging from higher data rates for users to connecting the Internet of Things and autonomous cars and more all at a reasonable cost – is quite compelling. So compelling that these initial moves from concept to reality will license a lot of discussion across industries about new business models made possible by 5G. A high public profile for the technology itself is assured by the sex appeal of higher data rates for mobile phones. But, that public awareness, coupled with all the upgrades of wireless technology that creates the 5G reality, hammers a nail into the wall onto which a great many hats can be hung.

Tech Tonics for the Tech Backlash

2017 was a troubling year for Big Tech. There was that Russia thing ensnaring Facebook, Google and other digital dynamos after their leaders scoffed at the idea. There were the Silicon Valley cultural exposes on sexual harassment, gender issues generally, and the politics of the tech world more broadly.

Forecasting that Big Tech will work to put a kinder, gentler face on their businesses is a slam dunk.

This all comes on top of a growing discomfort with the influence these digital platforms have on society and business (though it might be noted we still seem to happily give up our data in exchange for mobile games and same-day delivery). In fact, the owners of these platforms are now referred to as the “Frightful Five” in some corners of the punditocracy. Forecasting that Big Tech, therefore, will work to put a kinder, gentler face on their businesses is a slam dunk. But, from a thought leadership perspective, the real opportunity is for those outside the top tier to differentiate themselves by making an argument as to how they really are empowering people, putting missions above profits and securing the future. Some will argue this is just “marketing,” but no one should make these claims without the will to give them the added advantage of truth.

Closing the gap between thought leadership and content marketing

For the past few years, the Content Marketing Institute has surveyed large content marketers about numerous things, including their goals for the coming year. Invariably, the number one goal for the new year was some version of “more engaging content.” In the most recent survey (that you can find here), those content marketers who report the greatest increased success, attribute the change to a focus on higher quality content. Content is still king. But, the shift in emphasis from quantity to quality gathered momentum in 2017 and will continue in 2018. The focus on quantity fed the Internet’s gaping maw and the rise of increasingly sophisticated tools for click counting. Audiences are now inundated with content and they are sophisticated enough to recognize clickbait even when it comes dressed up in marketing buzzwords. Audience development and engagement are now the strategic needs and require a higher level of intellectual capital embodied in any blog or white paper and a commitment to what the audience wants to hear, rather than what the content marketer wants to say.

Of course, the sound and fury of thought leadership spread over an entire year will go beyond this list. What are your ideas?