Transcript
Jason Mlicki (00:01.976)
So Jeff.
Jason Mlicki (00:06.906)
I picked this topic this time around, so I’ll do my best to introduce it and where it came from. So the top, what’s that? Funny guy, funny guy. I didn’t have a counter to that. That’s a shame. So, okay. This topic actually came from about nine or 10 months ago, I got a call from…
Jeff (00:14.259)
I can hear the clicking off. Do you hear all that clicking off?
Jason Mlicki (00:37.517)
an AMA chapter, American Marketing Association chapter, I had been referred and they wanted me to come speak. And I was like, I don’t know if I have anything broad enough, know, because you think about the AMA, it covers consumer marketing and business business marketing. It’s just much wider than the types of things that I focus on, which of course is more narrow to professional services and B2B. And they said, well, we’d like you to come speak. And they said, what would you like to speak about?
Well, that’s kind of tricky. So I threw out this idea of the evolution of marketing. This is sort of like how marketing has changed over the last 25 years. I’ve been at this now. I’ve been in the consulting or agency business, depending on how you look at it, 2001. So we’re coming up on almost 25 years. And I look over that 25-year period, and I just see sort of
three distinct eras and we’re sort of at this transition point to a third. so I thought it was just an interesting discussion to, I don’t like this opening at all. I’m gonna start with a new one. Yeah, it’s just a terrible opening. It’s dry, it’s boring. Let me think about this for a second.
Jeff (01:47.155)
Okay.
Jeff (01:53.789)
I actually liked where you were, you were kind of going there. I’m glad you did that because my son is, can hear him gaming and it’s dragging down performance here.
Jason Mlicki (02:02.968)
Yeah.
Jeff (02:07.327)
So I’m sending to tech. Actually, get.
Jason Mlicki (02:09.741)
gonna pause. So Jeff, I picked this week’s topic and let me tell you why. So I got a call this was maybe six months ago from the local chapter of the AMA, the American Marketing Association, and they said they wanted me to come speak in an event. But they put the onus on me, what do you want to talk about? I’m like, oh okay, what do I want to talk about to a room full of marketers?
I just narrowed in on this idea of doing a retrospective and looking back at where marketing has been and where it’s headed. Like you, I’ve been doing this for a while. think I’ve been in either consulting or agency business since 2001, so coming up on 25 years. And I’ve found over the years that a lot of people that attend events like that, or maybe even listen to our show sometimes, are younger, right? They’re younger marketers and they didn’t live through some of those eras in time.
and those experiences. And there’s always a lot to be learned when you look back at what maybe you did in the past and why you did it that way. And then you look ahead at what you might do in the future. anyway, I’m porting that speaking pitch to this episode, I guess, is the long-winded way of entering this episode and saying that’s what we’re going to talk about. We’re going to talk about the last 25 years of marketing. I don’t think we can talk about the next 25. That’s way too big of an ask, but I’m hoping we can talk about the next three or four.
maybe five. So that’s my goal.
Jeff (03:41.183)
So what was it that you liked about this topic? And why did you stop at 25 years? We’re not even going to get back to David Ogilvy or any of that fun stuff.
Jason Mlicki (03:57.216)
Well, so why did I stop at 25 years? We’ll start with that question because that’s my lived experience. And so for me, it’s difficult for me to speak to, mean, to your point, I can obviously do history and research and I can look at what transpired. You know, in the, in the nineties or eighties or seventies or sixties or go back before that. I feel like my entry point into the world of marketing was when I finished business school and entered, know, entered an agency in 2001. So for me, it was like.
This is my kind of perspective on what I’ve seen over that 25 years. So was sort of that was just a basic timestamp. The reason I like it is I feel like as I’ve framed this, I see there being that 25 year window, I see there being three epics, sort of three eras of marketing. And we’ve just transitioned into a third. So that third era just started within the last couple of years. And so.
I just think it’s a good time to have this conversation because the way we’ve marketed for the last 10 or 15 years is going to change already has changed and will change even more in the next five or six because we’re in a new epic and we have to be cognizant of that. So that’s why I like it.
Jeff (05:13.961)
You mean watching Mad Men doesn’t qualify as deeply understanding?
Jason Mlicki (05:21.012)
So oddly enough, while we’re on this topic, first off, I’ve never watched Mad Men, which always kind of boggles your mind, number one. But number two, I actually have a friend that worked in that era in those New York agencies at that time. And if he’s still, I should reach out to him. It would be fun to have him on.
Jeff (05:27.772)
dude, you…
Jason Mlicki (05:48.61)
talk about that experience because he’s got some incredible stories about about living in that madman era of you know I guess Madison Avenue agencies right because he worked on and he’s like yeah it’s all true he’s like it’s all hundred percent like very much what what happened so
Jeff (06:06.941)
All right, we’re, I’m writing it down right now because I want to have that.
Jason Mlicki (06:10.35)
you
Jason Mlicki (06:14.606)
Yeah, it’d be good. He’s a great guy. So I’ll have to reach out to him. haven’t talked to him in a very long time. It’s probably been a decade since I’ve talked to him. But we’ll see if we can get him on.
Jeff (06:27.167)
That sounds like a really good reason to reach out to him. All right, so let’s jump into these epics. Are they epics or they epochs? I’ve often wondered.
Jason Mlicki (06:30.894)
So.
Jason Mlicki (06:36.362)
I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t even know what an epoch.
Jeff (06:39.229)
I like epics. I like epics better, but I don’t know. Those are words I tend to avoid because I don’t know how to use them.
Jason Mlicki (06:47.554)
Well, I think, I think to be quite frank, I never would have used that word. think you, I think you generated it from our good friend, Chachi PT. I would have used the word era. Epoch seems like it should be much longer. It should be like hundreds and hundreds of years. whereas an era to me is, is maybe 10. So, you know, it’s funny cause I was thinking about this and I kind of go back and forth. You know, I have this belief system that professional services are bought, sold. So you can’t really sell.
a professional service as much as you can enable a client to buy it. So to some extent, there’s a murky space here for me. And that murky space is somewhere between my point of view on what clients need to be doing right now or in the next three to four years and what was, is, or will be important to clients in terms of what they’re buying.
So it’s sort of like this weird intersection of like, what’s my point of view on what they should be doing and what is it that they’re buying? Does that make sense? Like it’s, they’re…
Jeff (07:52.619)
It makes total sense to me.
Jason Mlicki (07:54.85)
You know, they’re two sides of the same coin in some ways, but it’s hard to articulate what, know, whether I’m guiding them in a certain way or they’re pulling me in a certain way. Right. So, anyway, I’m looking at this through the lens of where we saw investments being made. So when we’re getting hired, what is it that clients are asking for and what is it that we’re providing them? And that was sort of like how I came up with these errors.
And then I think there are these, these transition, there’s transitional moments that occur where something big happens and that shapes the nature of the conversation and shapes the nature of what’s going on. So, so anyway, I think there’s three of these, there’s three eras I’ve lived through two of them and we’re starting the third.
Jeff (08:45.159)
I hope you lived through the third one.
Jason Mlicki (08:45.41)
Okay.
I hope I do as well. Thank you. Thank you for that vote of confidence, I think. Okay, so era one, I’m going to describe as the brand and consistency era. So this is when I first entered the agency business was in 2001. We’re coming out of the dot-com bubble, which imploded in 2000. And if I think about that era from 2000 to 2010, what we were consistently getting hired for,
was brand strategy work, messaging, identity, systems thinking. It was very much we would see marketers and leaders that were trying to sort of orchestrate and engineer the experience, the message, you name it. And they were always trying to get consistency in everything they did. In fact, they would put people in place whose very job was essentially
kind of audit brand use and try to keep people by using the brand in a consistent way, whether it be through language or visuals or you name it. Some of my best clients in that era, I think back, you we spent so much time trying to be very specific about every single word choice on a brochure or on a webpage or in a, literally in an environment. You know, we, I remember one of my favorite clients that took us into all kinds of new places.
We spent months building a very kind of branded experience in their reception area and conference space so they could bring clients in and take them through a story, walk them through a story, through a series of boards and panels. So everything was very controlled and very consistent. And that was what we saw again and again from firms. It was very much just this era of
Jason Mlicki (10:43.99)
I want to try to control the message. I want to try to control the way it’s delivered in every touch point possible. Even you think in the early stages, and this is still kind of early stages of the web. You’re talking 2000, 2001, Google is not really a commercial thing yet. So it’s not even really a search engine world yet. And one of the big things back then was how you could get pixel level control of a web experience. You want the website to render exactly the way you want it on every device.
every screen size, every browser type. And it was super hard, right? It was super hard to get that, know, and designers would pull their hair out over this. And that’s, but that was expectation was, you know, it’s gotta be rendered exactly the way I want it. That was what the marketer wanted, right? And that, I feel like that era went from 2000 to 2010 is what I’ve kind of bookmarked. 2010 might be a little bit late. It probably died a little earlier than that, but it might’ve started earlier than that, but.
That’s sort of what I see as that arrow one. So.
Jeff (11:45.141)
So I have warm fuzzy feeling right now. The way you describe that was excellent. I joined Anderson in 95 and I joined them as a family business consultant. kind of a sub practice area of wealth management.
Jason Mlicki (11:51.662)
Yeah.
Jeff (12:14.729)
I went from there into their enterprise group, which was the global middle market practice. And then with the, the.com that kind of morphed into VC backed fast growth companies. and I started out in a local office. So at a geographical level. So in the five years I was at Anderson, had geography.
industry and practice. And then we got a new CEO and things decided to change. And because of this phenomenon and how powerful it was and the arbitration at Anderson had just ended, I had my pick of roles. I went into brand and brand management, and it was exactly as you described. We were trying to control
Jason Mlicki (13:03.532)
Hmm. Okay.
Jason Mlicki (13:08.59)
Hahaha
Jeff (13:11.657)
Everything. I mean, everything. And it was, I think it was part, and I’d like to get your thoughts on this. What drove that phenomenon generally, but specifically what drove it at Anderson was kind of globalization and anarchy of trying to pull all these different practices and offices together. So it looked like one firm was serving global clients was a big part of it, but guys.
Jason Mlicki (13:13.294)
breathing.
Jeff (13:40.785)
I remember we had this orange sphere as part of the logo and it was multi-dimensional. It was 3D and it had to look that way all the time. And they had this treatment where it would dent walls and signs like the sphere had been there and moved on to the next thing. It was so silly, but it was, that’s, that’s what it was like.
Jason Mlicki (13:45.614)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Mlicki (14:05.922)
Sounds kind of cool.
Jeff (14:08.213)
That’s what it was like. You described it perfectly. Why do you think that was that way?
Jason Mlicki (14:13.846)
I actually think you the nail on the head. was that we were coming out of an era where the economy was regional. I even think about who we competed with as an agency in that era. was all local shops in central Ohio and all the clients bought locally. They would have, I remember I had a meeting with the head of marketing for Nationwide somewhere in that window. And he’s like, Jason, I’ve got four agency relationships. Two of them are like, know, big New York global agencies that are
we use for all of our global work. And then we’ve got two Columbus agencies we work with. I don’t need a third one, right? It was a super simple concept. And that’s how he looked at the world. He’s like, I need two local partners and I need big global partners. And that’s it. And so I think you hit the nail on the head, this idea that we were moving from a regional economy to a global economy and people were still sort of figuring that out. they, they,
different, they wanted to try to control something because they didn’t feel like they could control what was really happening. Also, know, late in mid nineties, you got NAFTA. So he’s like the, the, global economy is, is becoming a thing. Right. I want to tell one quick story I used to love. One of my favorite things to do in this era, by the way, was to dig up brand guidelines from firms, anybody we’d work with them, like give me your brand guidance. And my favorite part about brand guidelines is these would be like 5,800 page documents. Right. And they all did the same thing.
Page one would say some kind of pithy thing about how a brand is more than a logo. It’s all these things that have fuzzy warm language. And then pages two through 106 would be all about logo usage. So if it’s more than a logo, why do I need a hundred pages to describe how to use the But my favorite part about this is what I found one, there was a local agency we competed with at the time. this was really smart. They had come up with the guidelines and on each page they had a little continuum at the bottom. And the continuum would say,
Jeff (15:44.162)
You
Jeff (15:49.735)
No.
Jason Mlicki (16:05.902)
whether this was sort of a suggestion or a requirement from some like a zero to 10, like a scale, right? Like, is this, this is a required usage or this is just a suggestion. And every single page was required. I’m like, so what’s the point of the scale? So anyway, that was the world, right? And that was the way, and that was a big deal was those guidelines. We got, we got hired to produce those guidelines a lot. And they were expensive and they were involved and it took a ton of time and a ton of work and a lot of specificity.
and nobody followed.
Jeff (16:37.407)
Yeah. And you know, what was so funny about that? my gosh. My warm fuzzies are getting even warmer. You know, I had business law and all that stuff in college. but I don’t think I ever understood law until I got into brand management because it really was an exercise in case law. Cause there’s always an exception. And whenever you made an exception to one of those guidelines or requirements,
Jason Mlicki (17:02.89)
Yes.
Jeff (17:06.993)
It altered everything in cascaded. then, and I think that’s probably the, the origination of that expression. What about ism? Cause it’s like, well, what about that practice? They did that. What a waste of time and energy. Let’s move on to the next epic.
Jason Mlicki (17:18.766)
What?
Jason Mlicki (17:25.174)
Yeah, so the next era, I feel like the eras are delineated by moments, right? And so the next big moment, of course, is the Great Recession that occurs around 08, 09. So you have the financial meltdown, I guess, so the collapse of the financial system, the markets take a massive tumble. It’s sort of total chaos. Really respected brands just disappear overnight. So it’s just kind of totally crazy.
the transition to the content era. it’s technically, I would argue it really starts with Google. Like when Google becomes a commercial thing, you start seeing it show up around 05 or 06 or 07, but it’s the recession that drives it into the heart of the economy. And it’s sort of also paired with this sort of open source, freely, widely available content management systems. So
What people don’t understand is before all this, if you wanted to build a website, it was entirely custom built, custom developed. If you had a content management system, it probably cost you like $100,000. I mean, it was really expensive for someone just to publish an article. And WordPress made that all like basically free, right? So all of sudden, anybody with a voice could sort of self-publish easily to the world. And then Google, of course, gave people the ability to find stuff.
So all these things collide at the same time to create the content era. And so I feel like the content era, all the investments we saw from clients, it really, it’s just all about content and SEO. It’s just keyword research trying to get found for niche topics, this or that, or whatever it might be, published to the world and the world will come to your door. It’s the inbound movement. It’s this whole era in which marketing
totally transitions to one of like, well, rather than trying to go reach clients and build a relationship with them, just publish and let them come to you, right? That whole power dynamic kind of shifts and that becomes the entire focus of the effort for the next decade, right? So it’s this, I’m delineating this around the great recession, but I put 2010 on it and I think that ran up into 22 and I’ll tell you why 22 in a minute, but anyway, I’ll let you comment on that.
Jeff (19:47.155)
Yeah, the, the internet definitely matured, entered adolescence and websites were no longer brochures. This was the time, Salesforce and SaaS started happening, marketing automation platforms like Eloqua and Marketo were born and
Jason Mlicki (20:05.101)
Yep.
Jeff (20:13.193)
the dynamic change, as you said, right? That’s when inbound became a thing and it almost switched from don’t be hard sell, let’s attract the clients. To your point, professional services are not sold, they’re bought. That shapes that whole idea. And to me, that came into the wheelhouse of professional services because they don’t like to sell.
Jason Mlicki (20:42.061)
Yes.
Jeff (20:43.099)
Anyway, right. So they’re like, great. We don’t have to sell marketing automation and people are just going to come to our door and life is great. And it’s, it’s perfect. but I think you’re.
Jason Mlicki (20:47.382)
Yeah, I don’t have to do that anymore. Yeah.
Jason Mlicki (20:53.826)
Yeah. And I don’t have to network anymore, right? The economy goes from regional to national or global. I don’t have to network in my own little geography to find clients. I can publish great thinking that will get found on the internet. People from all over the country, all over the world will find me.
And that’s sort of that era, right? And brand, I don’t want to say brand’s not important anymore or not relevant anymore. It’s always relevant. But there’s just this recognition that I can build a brand through content. And I can become known for my expertise. Or I can become known for my perspective through this kind of twin combination of content and search.
that just explodes. And the reason I picked the Great Recession as the moment in time is just because these moments in time when there’s great change tend to accelerate behaviors that were already in motion, right? Everyone’s looking for a different way to do things. Obviously social media is born around this time. I mean, I know it’s hard to believe, but for our younger listeners, mean, like I remember when Facebook first emerged in 05, 06, somewhere in there, and you could only get onto Facebook
Jeff (21:46.921)
The other thing…
Jeff (22:02.133)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Mlicki (22:12.586)
if you had an edu email, you couldn’t get on. And so our clients were all clamoring to find ways to get edu emails again, so they could get back into Facebook and see what was going on, because they thought this was the way they were going to reach young people. As hard as that is to believe as well.
Jeff (22:29.097)
Man, you are old as dirt when you describe them. You described them. There were two other phenomenon that I think accelerated this. one was once you had the platforms, email became cheap way to communicate, not just broad geographic. extended your reach and your scale, but it was cheap. Right. And everybody jumped in and,
Jason Mlicki (22:31.059)
Hahaha!
Jason Mlicki (22:46.509)
Yes.
Jeff (22:58.869)
started doing that. The other thing that marketing automation and the web allowed was a more detailed segmentation. You can begin to segment by behavior and activity and even, you know, kind of self-reported interests. You you saw a lot of like newsletters pop up and, this one’s on this industry or this.
Jason Mlicki (23:10.892)
Yes.
you
Jeff (23:28.573)
you know, regulatory topic or whatever. And that was a sea change.
Jason Mlicki (23:35.98)
and the specialization that emerged from that, right? I mean, there’s so many niche specialist firms and practices that never could have existed before all that. And you see them all the time, right? So yeah, I think that’s a really important point to make. Okay, you wanna talk about the third era? Okay, so I believe the third era was born in, you know,
Jeff (23:56.468)
Yep.
Jason Mlicki (24:01.804)
December of 22, I guess whenever chat GPT hits the market in a commercial way And you’ve heard me talk a lot about this the last couple months but That the adoption of that as a tool by so many people so rapidly Has just massively changed the content has taken it’s taking us out of the content era and back into sort of a new brand era and there’s sort of
There’s a couple of reasons why one is obviously content proliferation. So just this idea that anybody now can only publish easily. They can produce easily people. So people that struggled to get their thinking out now are just like, my God, I have this magical elixir that can make me, can give me produce stuff super easily. Whether that stuff is good or not, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just that there’s such a flood of it that now it’s like, you know, we had, I’ve described this a couple of times as we had a, we had a content explosion that occurred.
in that kind of 2008 to 2020 time frame. ChatGPT is just a content supernova, right? It’s like it just went from explosion to cold fusion, right? know, like, bam, so much that nobody can swallow it. The good news is the other side of that, though, is that, hey, this AI-enabled search stuff makes it easier for me to filter through information and easier for me to find stuff. And I don’t have to do all this digging anymore. I don’t have to dig through 20 hyperlinks. can…
Jeff (25:08.405)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Mlicki (25:26.274)
get a summary, the summary will cover 90 % of what I need. And if I want to go deeper, I’ll pick a few here and there. And so I just think that that content window is closing and not saying content is important and thought leadership is important. It’s maybe more important than ever, but it’s changing. It’s changing how you approach it and what the investments of the next 10 years are going to look different than the investments of the last 10 years. So let me pause.
Let you react to that.
Jeff (25:59.625)
I think you’re absolutely right. And I’m just thinking, through each of these epics and, you know, who called all these epics, at least in my mind, it may not be accurate was Seth Godin. And I think about, you know, that, that first epic, you know, the purple cow, what’s your brand? How do you stand?
Jason Mlicki (26:20.726)
I knew you were gonna say Seth Gilton.
Jason Mlicki (26:27.735)
Yeah.
Jeff (26:29.263)
out. The second one with the marketing automation and segmentation and content was permission marketing. And then this last one to some degree, you didn’t mention it now, but I think you did in setup was this concept of belief structures. And that’s a concept of tribes.
Right. That’s that’s simpatico. That’s getting aligned with people that share your worldview because as you said, and I love the way you say it, you can really turn a phrase. You should think about becoming a marketer. know, professional services are bought, they’re not sold or they’re not sold. They’re bought. How do you prefer me to say that? Cause I’m going to put a TM on there for you.
Jason Mlicki (27:10.286)
You
Jason Mlicki (27:20.28)
I don’t think either way is fine.
Jeff (27:23.829)
But I think that’s important. And it became even more so because of a generational shift with the millennials. Millennials really wanted to work with firms that shared their belief systems, that stood for something. You know, they left all the other institutions that other people got meaning from.
and started to get their meaning from work. And they wanted to work at a place that aligned with their values. And I think that created an opportunity, but also a risk for firms. And we talked about that in our ESG episodes, but that was another thing that I think a lot of firms are going to wrestle with in terms of how they market and position themselves.
Jason Mlicki (28:21.806)
Well, you hit the nail on the head. I think that’s what this third era is about. I think it’s about brand again, but it’s brand through the lens of point of view and belief systems. We’re not going to go back to the control and consistency era where we’re trying to over-engineer the logo and make sure everyone uses the same elevator pitch. Remember the elevator pitch, right? That whole thing is not coming back.
But I do think this idea of like, is the master point of view of this firm? Like, what does this firm really truly believe? What’s our perspective on the world is going to matter more than ever. And then the individuals that carry that and their unique points of view are going to be more important than ever. We’ve talked about this in the episode on the crisis of credibility and the decline in trust in institutions and the rise in trust in individuals.
And so you’ve heard me talk about, think when I think about the content experience going forward, firms are going to have to put more credence on building thought leaders and less energy on developing thought leadership. Not saying that you don’t need both. I’m saying, but you have to really think about what it takes to make someone a thought leader. And most firms don’t do that. They just think about
Hey, here’s an issue, let’s build a point of view on that issue and let’s take it to market, but they don’t stop and think about who’s gonna carry it and how they’re gonna carry it. And that’s gonna be really important in this next era is the people, know, the people, bringing the people forward in ways that we haven’t brought them forward in the historically. Most firms don’t feel comfortable with that. They get uncomfortable with that, so.
Okay. Pause. Pause for breath. Number one. Number two. Pause for perspective. What do you think about this? Jason, you are crazy. Your arrows are concocted, over-engineered. Jason, you’re spot on. Jason, you’re somewhere in the middle.
Jeff (30:05.801)
Ha ha ha!
Jeff (30:22.591)
You’re very attentive and you’ve been that way all your life, obviously, because your summation of these epics are very consistent with my experience. Even though I may not have been thinking about it, you definitely brought those memories to the fore.
Jeff (30:44.349)
I definitely think you’re on to something around creating thought leaders, not thought leadership. It’s, some people may think that this is pedantic, but I don’t think it’s pedantic at all because it’s people connect with people. They connect with ideas, but the ideas are delivered by people.
Jason Mlicki (31:14.125)
Yes.
Jeff (31:14.333)
Right? It’s that simple. That’s why charisma is so important. But there’s different types of charisma. But I think it’s crucial for firms because generally the way firms think about this is whoever volunteers to be a thought leader gets to be the thought leader because they have the energy and
Jason Mlicki (31:38.414)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff (31:42.387)
the courage and the fortitude to push through their, their passion about something. Those are great things. And we’ve talked about this. What are the attributes of a thought leader? But that doesn’t mean they need to be the thought leader because they could be talking about a topic that is outside of your capability suite that you need moving forward. They could be misdirecting your brand. They could be projecting the wrong type of brand.
for you. And this idea that, you know, some kind of thought leadership is better than no thought leadership at all. It’s just not true. It’s just not true. I’ve gone in firms and told them to just stop because what you’re putting out is so bad. It’s hurting your brand. You’d be better without it. So firms need to really think about who are thought leaders
Jason Mlicki (32:32.681)
your credibility.
Jeff (32:42.429)
Why are they thought leaders and how can we make them even stronger thought leaders? Because you don’t see that investment. You really don’t. You’ll see investment in training, you know, around regulatory stuff, but there is a lot of soft stuff that goes into being a thought leader.
Jason Mlicki (33:03.338)
Yeah, well to your point I wrote a short article last a couple weeks ago just in the head title was a point of view requires courage and And it was just a short article about How you have to recognize that when you ask your people to put themselves out there they’re putting themselves out there and You have to create the conditions for them to do that where they feel safe That they’re on a limb the limbs not gonna get cut off number one and number two
that you help them, you help them recognize that it’s important that they do this and here’s why, and help them understand this sort of connection. And then also help the firm understand it, because you’ve pointed this out many times, which is like, there’s a lot of risk. If you say we’re gonna build a program and we’re gonna focus on developing seven thought leaders, and these people are going to go into the marketplace and tell our story, there’s a lot of fear around that.
that when one of those people leaves, we’re in trouble. Or if they say the wrong thing, we’re in trouble. All these things right now. But the risk of not doing it is going to be substantial. Because the way that thought leadership has been run the last 10 years is not going to work very well in the next 10. You don’t have a choice. This is the direction of where buyers are going. It’s where technology is going. It’s where content is going.
So making people more human and more out there is going to be a mandate for, for firms. so that’s what I think this next era is about. think it’s about, you know, it’s, it’s about podcasting. It’s about video. It’s about multimedia. It’s about lifting up individual voices and letting them tell the stories that they tell. Great. And building the point of view, helping them develop their point of view such that they can cut through the noise and
And they can build the sympatico that you like to talk about with the marketplace such that you get the brand preference you want. So that’s a thousand word summary. One sentence.
Jeff (35:03.167)
Hmm.
Jeff (35:08.817)
I actually think there’s a huge opportunity for firms here. A lot of my clients
have a rough time getting ideas out of their mind and down onto paper.
To me that says, your idea is not fully baked and that exercise is critical for critical thinking. But let’s put that aside. there are, firms have to play to their strengths. And if writing is not your strength or presenting isn’t your strength, but conversations are your strength. And I would argue that
Jason Mlicki (35:34.862)
you
Jason Mlicki (35:44.844)
Yes.
Jeff (35:57.937)
is one of the superpowers of most consultants, that ability to sit down one on one and have a meaningful conversation with a client is a superpower. The only difference is we’re filming it now, right? Which is, which is somewhat different. And if you want to see a great example of this, I’m going to recommend David Ryan’s interview.
Jason Mlicki (36:16.3)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeff (36:27.067)
series. David’s a friend of mine and I worked with him on some of his thought leadership and writing, he just doesn’t have the patience for it. But when you see that guy sit down in a conversation, I mean, he just comes to life and just checks all the boxes. But traditional thought leadership, I would have said would have been difficult for him.
but you get him in front of a crowd or one-on-one, that guy comes to life. And I think firms.
Jason Mlicki (37:03.47)
Well, think that, yeah, we never really touched on this in our last episode about marketing roles. But I believe one of the roles that’s fundamentally missing in most firms is this argument-shaping skill. It’s something that Bob Bade and I talked about for years in our Thought Leadership Conference. And what it is, the skill is really the individual who has the ability to help someone like that to develop a compelling argument.
because the belief in the world is that thought leaders somehow magically develop these points of view and write a book and then they become their thrust on the stage. And it just doesn’t work that way. There’s always a person or people behind the scenes that are helping them shape their arguments and helping them, pushing them that one level further.
And a lot of firms think that their editors are ghostwriters and that the subject matter experts treat them as such. And that couldn’t be further from the truth, right? So they’re argument shapers. Their job is to help you make a compelling argument. And it’s a really important skill. so it doesn’t really matter how you manifest, whether it’s a written article or it’s a video or it’s a podcast interview, having those key people behind the scenes that know how
how to help someone construct a compelling argument, how to tell a good story is going to be critical skills or role, I don’t know what you want to call it, inside of firms in this next era. If you don’t have that, you’ve got to find it. So, because it’s going to be really important.
Jeff (38:47.669)
The flip side of that skill, if you’re a thought leader, you need to be open to the criticism. And that’s hard. That’s hard for smart people to take, but that’s what it takes. I’m working on a white paper now that’s 30 years in the making. And I shared it with some friends. They loved parts of it and other parts they just beat up mercilessly.
Jason Mlicki (38:49.678)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Mlicki (38:54.53)
Yes.
Jeff (39:17.365)
And I didn’t want to hear that, but I know it’s making it better. And you have to be open to that because that is so valuable. It’s that dance between those two. And those, I think, are the best thought leaders and the people that have that emotional intelligence in this next era that can do that collaborative dance are going to stand out.
Jason Mlicki (39:18.124)
Yeah.
Jason Mlicki (39:44.426)
And you just hit the nail on the head in terms of why that shift from developing thought leadership to developing thought leaders is not pedantic. It’s because you’re both doing that and then you’re enabling people to learn how to receive that feedback and be comfortable with that and be comfortable in that situation. Maybe they weren’t comfortable in the past. So, okay.
Let’s take this to wrap. What did we miss? What did we not talk about that was in our preliminary outline that we should have talked about? And what advice do we have for listeners on what they should do with this information?
Jeff (40:22.485)
still think we should have talked about David Ogilvie and advertising.
Jason Mlicki (40:26.753)
You
Jeff (40:33.395)
I thought that was pretty thorough. I could encapsulate it this way. And I’ve done this before when I spoke about brand many years ago, but I think it’s still relevant today. When I would start my presentation, I would pull out a Tiffany box. And generally you would see women in the audience draw towards me.
And I would call that out. Why did you do that? And they’re like, well, it’s a Tiffany box. And I’m like, how did you know it was a Tiffany box? And that’s how I equated brand and why brand was so important to firms, to package. So when something came across your desk, right, whether that was in print or electronic, you immediately recognize it. So you needed your box.
But nobody cares about the box. They care about what the box represents and what’s inside. And the thought leadership, your point of view is the content of the box. And you want people wanting to undo that white ribbon and get to that box. And ultimately have that experience, that Tiffany gift receiving experience.
Jason Mlicki (41:40.556)
Yeah.
Jeff (42:03.699)
with your brand. So all these errors kind of build on one another, but it’s still the same, right? It’s about a client experience. It’s about differentiation. But what differentiates and draws people in, I don’t think is necessarily changing, but we are definitely getting more clarity on it.
Jason Mlicki (42:33.644)
Yeah, I like the Tiffany box analogy a lot because I do think that the point of view increasingly is what’s drawing people in. It is the Tiffany box from a B2B firm because that’s what, you you think about the Tiffany box, it’s creating your lean in concept. It’s creating sort of…
magnetic. It’s pulling you towards it and that point of view does that. really strong point of view pulls people into it, pulls people into its orbit and that’s exactly what I think this air is about. So you hit the nail on the head with that analogy. I like it a lot and I know I changed it a little bit but I like it a lot anyway. But all right it’s a wrap. Great conversation. I enjoyed it a lot and
Jeff (43:20.435)
Hahaha
Jason Mlicki (43:29.634)
Jeff, talk to you next week.
Jeff (43:31.765)
See you buddy.
