Thought Leader’s Voice: Law Business Research’s Strategies on Thought Leadership at Engaging C-suite

Welcome to Thought Leaders voice, a global interview series where we talk to some of the brightest minds in the respective fields. Thought Leaders voice is all about sharing inspiration, ideas, and knowledge from great thinkers, influencers & game changers from all over the world.

Today we spoke with Ameet Phadnis – Content Director and Head of Professional Services at Law Business Research. Ameet is a highly data driven, customer insight focused director, who brings a strong commercial focus to operational roles and strategic assignments.

“Making things simple is quite hard” –  Ameet Phadnis

Our Marketing director, Shivangi sat down with Ameet to pick his brains about thought leadership.

Here’s a transcript of the conversation –

• Shivangi – You have a wealth of experience building first-class marketing & thought leadership campaigns at some of the world’s largest consultancy firms. You must’ve learned a lot over the years. What’s the most common mistake you see people making when it comes to thought leadership?
• Ameet – I think the most common mistake I have seen is – going into too much depth in terms of trying to explain the “Thought Leadership” content and not making the outcomes very simple to understand. Making things simple, is quite hard and I believe that most people when they present the results of what they’ve done, make it very difficult to interpret. I think that is a big issue and that is the key thing that I would like to see changed when people work through “Thought Leadership”.
• Shivangi – How is Law Business Research adjusting to the way the audience’s preferences, habits & insights are changing?
• Ameet – So, our audience is a mixture of in-house counsel and private practice law practitioners. Their preferences really are trying to get more and more information real time, more and more information as and when they need it. So, one of the things we are doing is, we are trying to summarize the content that we have and provide it in simple digestible form.  We have things like a taxi briefing, very summary content, and so we are trying to distil what we have and make it easy to digest.
• Shivangi – What’s your stand on Marketing team approaching the principal of “fewer but better” thought leadership campaigns?
• Ameet – I think- the key messages I’ve given are very much along that line. I think- fewer but more impactful – is I would say, that’s how we would be more successful.
• Shivangi – What’s the most successful campaign activation you’ve seen in your professional experience?
• Ameet – So, I was involved in a survey some years ago, and it was a CEO survey. And it was really looking for what are the key measures or dimensions of a successful company versus a not- successful company. It involved a lot of research, a lot of C-level interaction, but it was successful because the message that came out were very simple. There were seven key principles and each one was summarized in one word. Therefore, the audience listening to it could understand it, digest it and actually do something about it.
• Shivangi – Finally, how do you measure Thought Leadership & what’s your top tip for maximizing the ROI on a campaign?
• Ameet – I think measuring thought leadership is not something I have thought very deeply about, so I am not sure how I would measure it, apart from outcomes. So, what was the outcome of the campaign, you can gauge whether people thought – actually this was actionable and they actually made the change n their business. So, those are the only ways I would suggest, in which you could measure it. I think it is about making the “Thought Leadership” simple and actionable, and that’s how you would maximize ROI.

You can reach Ameet on LinkedIn.

Discover more insights as we speak to other industry leaders as a part of our global thought leaders voice series.

In the meantime, if you’d like to get insights on driving your content campaigns with innovative research to claim your profile as a thought leader, get in touch for a free consultation call with our subject matter experts.