As I mentioned in the last post, we have recently been looking at thought leadership outside of professional services; there are some good examples and some not so good.
One that intrigues me is a large section of ‘Thought Leadership’ on the FedEx site on the subject of Access (their capital) which is “the force that makes all forms of interaction and exchange possible between people, businesses and nations.” FedEx have published an index of ‘Access’ for 109 countries comprising 23 variables as diverse as server security, internet tariffs and airport infrastructure. There are no surprises in the ranking; Hong Kong is top, Singapore is next, the US is 10th, and Uganda is 109th, for instance.
There are many eloquent words written about ‘Access’; for example that it “…might just offer a grand unified theory of our social existence.” But it feels to me a bit like eating ice for lunch (as Simon Cowell recently remarked). The increasing interconnectedness of the world is an impressive phenomenon, and countries with more of it are better off (or have more of it because they are better off). But, so what?
Effective thought leadership marketing addresses a problem or opportunity that people (in the target audience) care about. If this topic resonated, we’d expect to see other people writing about it, especially since the campaign has run for 4 years. If you look at the, say, top 50 search results for a successful thought leadership marketing campaign, as many as half the results will be articles, blog posts etc. written about it by others. For FedEx that proportion is 6%: most of what is written about ‘Access’ is written by FedEx.
No matter how good the marketing, I wonder if FedEx have picked (or created) a topic no-one else really cares about….