Kudos to my colleague Mark Pinsent who pointed this great report from the EIU
Download the marketing paper Engaging Global Executives: 10 Megatrends in B2B Marketing 2008
The 10 megatrends it predicts include:
1. Thought leadership becomes a top priority
2. B2B marketers go higher, deeper and wider
3. Integrated marketing becomes the norm
4. Emerging markets move to centre stage
5. Knowledge management comes of age
6. The second coming of the web
7. A new conference model
8. The growing influence of advertising agencies
9. B2B purchasing decisions become more complex
10. The ROI obsession
Regarding PR agencies (it lumps them together with ad agencies) this report claims that they lack the “intellectual firepower to help create sophisticated thought leadership campaigns”. It goes on to say:
As a marketing executive from a large professional services company said: “it’s up to us, to our regional teams and our core executive leadership to create the intellectual property and thought leadership necessary to create value for our clients.” The role of the advertising agency, says the executive, “is to enhance, complement and promote those initiatives, not drive their formation.”
I think this report is so far off the mark with this comment it makes the rest of it lack any credibility - nevertheless with this bias aside it does raise some good points and is recommended reading for all.
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Hey Jonny - did you read it? It seemed like a great find, but by the end it just reads like a media pack designed to endorse EIU’s service offerings.
Apparently the EIU is “the world’s premier provider of thought leadership services…” and hey presto, megatrend #1 is… Thought leadership becomes a top priority.
Still marketing is not always evil, right? We all do it. And EIU is obviously trying to establish a position of thoughtleadership around… thoughtleadership.
More interestingly, how/where do you position EIU and its services with your AR clients?
Interesting to see thought leadership as a leading B2B trend. However, I completely disagree with the view that PR lacks the firepower to create thought leadership campaigns. PR absolutely can and should ask the right questions of clients to drive their thinking and marketing around how to truly differentiate themselves and how to engage with and add value to their target audiences.
You can be the best thought leader in the world but with no communication no-one will ever know. The very nature of a thought leader is sharing information with others, adding value to others lives through the thought leadership material and the most powerful form of attaining this is via PR.
Cheers
Craig