When Should Thought Leaders Play Defense?

Yesterday I mentioned a fascinating article from Marketing Management about how Mayo Clinic enjoys top-of-mind preference among U.S. consumers (based on being able to go anywhere in the U.S. for treatment of a serious medical condition which required highly specialized care) on the order of three times that of hospital #2. What was even more astonishing to me was the article authors, Len Berry (author of Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic) & Kent Seltman (marketing director at Mayo from ’92 – ’06), stated that:

Mayo Clinic developed this brand, this reputation, by primarily playing brand defense – rather than offense.  Brand defense focuses on maintaining the purity of the brand; it is analogous to the sociological phenomenon of protecting the honor of the family name. It includes preventing institutional decisions, behaviors, or relationships that would undermine the integrity of the organization and responding vigorously through legal or other means to external parties that exploit the brand.

This is admittedly contrary to what I usually say about thought leaders always “playing offense” as part of the insurgent marketing mentality that most thought leaders posses. However, Mayo Clinic is no ordinary thought leader.

In fact, there’s been a great deal of discussion about “getting to” or attaining thought leader status, but there’s decidedly less discussion on defending, sustaining and growing your thought leadership status once you’ve attained it. I’m reminded of a great saying from the cycling movie, American Flyers:

“Res firma mitescere nescit”  or, as literally translated, “A firm resolve does not know how to weaken.” and as stated in the movie “Once you’ve got it up, keep it up!”

That is literally the resolve that a thought leader requires in order to sustain a valid thought leadership position. Once they’ve got it up, they need to keep it up. Further, once they’ve got it up, they must defend it, just as Mayo does with their defensive branding strategy.

How then, when most of thought leadership is about playing offense, developing your point of view and engaging with and advocating for a change in perspective, do you shift gears to move to a defensive position to protect your brand and thought leader status?  Well, as it’s been stated before, the best defense is still a good offense. Thought leaders stay on top by, well, leading. In fact, as you’ll see in some of the instructive “brand management acid test” questions that Mayo asks (according to the article), the defensive posture is taken less with the ‘outside world’ and more with the ‘internal team’ to ensure that their endeavors meet their long-held brand standards.

The table below is one of the key features of the article. It lays out in six points the questions that Mayo Clinic asks as a defense against doing something that might be inconsistent with their brand. This struck me as a great simple test that could be adapted to create a ‘defense position for a thought leadership point of view’. You’ll see Mayo’s original acid test questions in the left column and the adapted thought leadership acid test questions in the right hand column.

What are your thoughts? How do you feel brands should defend and sustain (or, defend to sustain) their thought leading position? Or, are there a different set of questions that we should be asking here?