Spices and minarets

A number of years ago I had a meeting with some teenagers. They were bright people: so bright, in fact, that they'd taken the company they set up as part of the Young Enterprise scheme (a charity which encourages young people in the UK to get involved in business by setting up their own, in school) and turned it into a real-world operation.

What they did was advise other companies about how to market their products and services to young people; their contention being that most companies were useless at doing so and that it took young people to show them how to do it better. I remember a number of things from the meeting but the one that really sticks in my mind was their assertion that you didn't win the hearts and minds of young people by plastering your marketing with pictures of skateboards.

The reason I  mention this is that we've just put the finishing touches to a new White Space report about thought leadership in the Middle East. Despite the very obvious attractions of the consulting market in the Middle East (it grew by more than 20% last year, outstripping growth in any of the other markets we cover), consulting firms have been fairly slow to train the sights of the considerable thought leadership armoury on the region. There are exceptions - Booz & Co being the most notable - but generally the output, in terms of volume at least, has been underwhelming.

That's starting to change now - we've found more than 50 pieces of thought leadership about the Middle East that have been published in 2012 - but there's still a long way to go before the 'less is more' mantra applies here in the way it does globally. Meanwhile, those firms which are investing in the region are understandably keen to make sure their efforts are recognised. For many that's a question of relevance. In mature markets the relevance of a piece of thought leadership to its intended audience is becoming an increasingly important thing. Overwhelmed by the volume of thought leadership sent to them, clients are getting pickier about what they read, and one of the main things they look for in material is its relevance to them.

That means that relevance to their sector is pretty much a pre-requisite (about half of all thought leadership published in the first half of 2012 wasn't aimed at any specific sector) but that material may need to go one (or more) steps further: many clients we speak to say they need something that's relevant to their business function, their organisation, or even them personally, for it to stand a chance of being noticed.

For firms simply trying to establish their presence in the Middle East, that will feel like a few steps too far. And so, in an effort to recognise the need for relevance before the resources to do anything more about it exist, they make thought leadership look relevant. Enter pictures of spices and minarets.

Let's not be too quick to pass judgment here: few of us who publish or present anything haven't fallen into this trap. Only a few weeks ago I presented to a room full of consultants in Oslo and am ashamed to say that my presentation contained more pictures of fjords than is entirely normal when talking about the consulting market. What's more, some of what is being produced in the Middle East is made all the more attractive for having spices and minarets in it. And it's all very well-intentioned.

But...how can I put this? Well let's imagine you're a French client and you've been sent a piece of thought leadership by a Middle Eastern consulting firm, which is liberally festooned with pictures of the Eiffel Tower and croissants. Are you likely to be impressed?

Making thought leadership relevant to a client in the Middle East is as important as it is anywhere else; spices and minarets might cut it for now, but sooner or later relevance is going to need to mean something a bit deeper - and a bit less patronising - than that if it's not going to make Middle Eastern clients feel the same way the teenagers I met felt about skateboards.