I don’t see what people are going on about with psychedelics, when we have an equally mind-warping vehicle in writings about marketing strategies. The article

I don’t see what people are going on about with psychedelics, when we have an equally mind-warping vehicle in writings about marketing strategies. The article is fine. The Zeitgeist may not be. I was unaware of “thought leadership” as anything but two disjoint English words, but apparently it is a phrase so overused that it has become “fuzzy”. Not in a good, teddy bear way, but in a bad, my-business-will-fail way. And you can also “do thought leadership content”. For someone my age, this sounds like the sort of phrase you hear from someone experiencing a transient ischemic attack, but this is something people in marketing care about deeply. In common-sense land, there have been many cases of people “doing thought leadership content” — any major philosopher, mathematician, scientist, serious academicians, leaders in new musical and artistic forms... But no. “Thought leadership isn’t a type of content—it’s an approach to content.” Quite an epiphany, or delusion, take your pick. But it follows from the examples the Author cites “I want my brand to be seen as a leading authority in my industry/discipline.” Not to actually be the authority...that is secondary...but to be seen as a leading authority. For senior management in information content and technologies such as universities, this is embarrassingly close to the truth sometimes. E.g., the view of Harvard as a private endowment fund management firm, with a modest R&D division and a more modest educational appendage. This is predicated on a “fake it till you make it” taken to the extreme of “just fake it”. But not really. “The other important thing to understand is that in order for content to rise to the level of thought leadership, it has to be authentic. It has to be deeply rooted in your unique perspective or experience or expertise. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be completely original, but it has to belong to you and your brand in a way that is recognizably you.” Well-written...nice use of the word “you”. Problematic when it comes to defining what “belongs to” means, if it isn’t “completely original”. A total fake or copy isn’t “completely original”, but nothing is stopping you from you “belonging it”, I suppose. “Authenticity, once you can fake that you’ve got it made.” is the much-used quote that comes to mind. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/12/05/fake-honesty/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/12/05/fake-honesty/ That may be an unkind take, but a reasonable one. The rest of the article talks about specific techniques (tropes) to do that on the Web. Each of which makes me cringe whenever I see it in a blog or post title. They all sound like snake oil when I read that sort of formatted content. Not the content itself (never open the article to find out) but the way it is pitched and packaged in the blurb or title. It probably works the first time, but doesn’t work the tenth. The media is the message, and the message is “this is just marketing, can someone else read this and tell me if there is any actual content”.