As more organisations invest in thought leadership, standing out has become harder, not easier. Output is rising, but thought leadership effectiveness is declining. At the same time, pressure to prove commercial returns is forcing a rethink of what thought leadership is designed to do.

In this interview with Aspidistra, Rob Mitchell, co-founder of Exhibit B, a fractional thought leadership agency, and co-founder of FT Longitude, explains why scale has diluted impact, where quality is breaking down, and what needs to change for thought leadership to remain effective.

Why standing out is harder than ever

In the recent webinar, you described thought leadership as a ‘victim of its own success’. What do you mean?

Thought leadership used to be rare. It took time, money, and specialist skill, so the barriers to entry were high. Scarcity did a lot of the work. That scarcity has gone.

Exhibit B research shows that a quarter of B2B companies now publish more than 100 pieces of content a year, far more than most audiences can absorb. AI pushes that even further. The barriers to production are close to zero, so output rises even when quality does not.

The result is saturation. Audiences struggle to tell what is worth their time, even when the intent behind the work is serious.

Why does so much thought leadership feel generic?

Most companies follow a tried and tested formula and are unwilling to move beyond that. So there’s a clustering effect with most output looking similar and saying similar things. Companies also try to say too much and bring in too many internal voices. This means that Strong ideas lose force during review. Risk tolerance drops. Sharp edges get sanded down.

Herd behaviour reinforces this. Publishing what peers publish feels safer. In crowded conditions, that safety produces invisibility.

Where quality breaks down in modern thought leadership

Where is quality breaking down most clearly?

There’s an overreliance on surveys and not enough effort made in using them to say something fresh. Surveys dominate because they are easy to run and easy to repeat. Many produce results that feel obvious once published. Readers struggle to find anything that changes how they think.

Format adds to the problem. Long reports often signal effort rather than insight. There are an estimated 2.5 trillion PDFs online, and thought leadership keeps adding to that pile. Marketing directors increasingly admit that few people read them end to end.

Message discipline also breaks down. Too many pieces try to say everything. People remember one idea. If the work cannot be reduced to a single takeaway, it will not stick.

Many organisations consider themselves mature in thought leadership. Is that fair?

It’s true that skills have improved and investment has been significant. Teams are more deliberate. Standards are higher than they were.

Exhibit B research into maturity shows that most organisations rate themselves as fairly mature across governance, capability, and quality. Confidence is high. The problem is that maturity is relative. The same research shows investment rising across roles, teams, and functions at the same time. When everyone improves together, the advantage disappears.

Outcome still matters most. Governance, skills, distinctiveness, and business effect over time all count. No single score captures that.

The evidence problem: research, case studies, and storytelling

Case studies remain central to most programmes. What’s the problem?

Case studies focus on success and smooth narratives. The problem is that we only hear the positives, so that creates survivorship bias.

Readers see a clean path from decision to outcome and infer causality. They do not see the pilots that failed, the delays, or the conditions that made success possible. Thought leadership aims to shape behaviour. When it rests on partial evidence, it risks leading people toward poor decisions.

Storytelling is often treated as essential. Where does it go wrong?

Stories keep people engaged. They also filter reality. You can almost always find an anecdote that supports a claim. Stories also oversimplify, which Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes as the “narrative fallacy” in decision‑making.

The risk comes when stories replace evidence rather than support it. Thought leadership carries higher stakes than most marketing. People may act on it. That demands restraint in how much weight any single story carries.

What stronger thought leadership looks like in practice

What would a stronger approach look like?

A more realistic one. That includes difficulty, delay, and adjustment. Business rarely moves in straight lines. Showing that complexity makes insight more useful.

It also builds trust. Audiences know reality is messy. Firms that acknowledge that tend to sound more confident, not less.

Is there a realistic path to being more distinctive?

Yes, but it requires internal trust. Teams need leaders who accept calculated risk. Without that backing, content defaults to consensus.

There is a clear trade-off. Safer work lowers internal anxiety. It also lowers recall. More honest and more nuanced work attracts attention and builds credibility over time. Audiences are ready for that shift. Whether organisations choose to make it is still an open question.

Why thought leadership is under pressure to prove impact

Why does thought leadership struggle to deliver real impact today?

Thought leadership used to sit safely at the top of the funnel. It built a reputation and avoided hard measurement. That cover has gone. Leaders now ask what it does for revenue, for pipeline, for retention.

That pressure shows up clearly in budgets. Exhibit B research shows 88 percent of organisations expect thought leadership budgets to rise, and around a third expect increases above 10 percent. Investment is growing, but scrutiny is rising faster.

Teams pull spend toward short-term return and away from slower brand work. When that happens, thought leadership shifts from shaping memory to feeding quarterly targets. Most organisations still struggle to protect both at the same time.

What doesn’t get enough attention in thought leadership today?

Its role inside the organisation. For years, it escaped scrutiny because results were hard to prove. That allowed weak work to survive, but it also protected brand-building from constant commercial pressure.

Now everything is measured. That forces discipline, which is healthy. It also reshapes what gets produced. If every piece must justify itself in near-term revenue, teams gravitate toward ideas that are quicker, safer, and easier to prove, often at the expense of deeper, more original thinking that takes longer to pay back.

The result is not less content, but more of a certain kind of content: shorter-term, lower-risk, and often more tactical or reactive. That shift helps explain an apparent contradiction in the market. The 2021 LinkedIn-Edelman Thought Leadership Impact Report found that two-thirds of B2B decision-makers reported a sharp increase in thought leadership content, and that figure is higher now. Volume has grown, but much of that growth reflects output designed to perform in the short term, rather than build distinctiveness over time.

The role of AI: acceleration without advantage

How should organisations think about the role of AI?

Most treat it as a speed tool. It cuts costs and increases output. That helps teams keep up, but it does little for the audience.

HubSpot research shows the tension clearly. 71 percent of marketing leaders say AI helps them create content at a lower cost, yet 52 percent say that content performs worse. Volume rises. Effectiveness falls.

There is also a broader signal. Graphite, a content analytics firm, estimates that more than half of all content online was AI-generated as early as 2025. That does not mean half of thought leadership is machine-written, but it shows where production is heading.

AI adds real value when it enables work that was previously impractical. Large-scale qualitative interviews. Analysis of thousands of open responses. Rapid synthesis of complex material. Used this way, it expands what teams can attempt rather than pushing more average work into the feed.

Key takeaways on thought leadership effectiveness

• Volume has outpaced insight, creating saturation
• Commercial pressure is eroding long-term brand building
• AI increases output but often reduces impact
• Distinctiveness requires internal trust and risk tolerance
• More realistic, evidence-led thinking builds credibility

Frequently asked questions about thought leadership

Why is thought leadership becoming less effective?

Because content volume has increased faster than insight, while commercial pressure has shortened time horizons and reduced distinctiveness.

How does AI affect thought leadership quality?

AI improves speed and scale but often lowers effectiveness unless used for deeper research, synthesis, and analysis.

Is thought leadership still valuable for B2B brands?

Yes, but only when it prioritises originality, evidence and long-term memory over short-term lead generation.

How can organisations stand out with thought leadership?

By accepting calculated risk, reducing internal dilution, and focusing on one clear, defensible idea per piece.

Rob Mitchell is co-founder of Exhibit B and FT Longitude, specialising in research-based thought leadership for global B2B brands.

Watch Exhibit B’s webinar on how thought leadership is under strain, why volume and sameness are eroding impact, and what needs to change for it to work again. You can also read Rob Mitchell’s blog, Stories in thought leadership are engaging, but are they reliable?, which examines why anecdotes persuade so easily and where they mislead.

Photo by Leandro Hernández on Unsplash