How do you build authority when you specialise in a horizontal, not a vertical?
I spoke with Jason Anthoine, a seasoned internal communications expert who sells to Chief Communications Officers (CCOs) at large enterprises. The market isn’t big enough in any one vertical for him to niche down, and what he does is applicable to every organisation with a large number of employees, so why limit his opportunity?
The problem he faces, as many horizontal specialists do, is that there’s no gathering point for these CCOs. If there is, it's likely in an intimate, invite-only setting. They don’t read many newsletters or listen to podcasts, and if they do, it’s broad media: Harvard Business Review and The Daily.
If Jason could get his insights in front of these CCOs, they’d listen. But he hasn’t figured out how to do that consistently.
His peers in internal communications do gather at specific events, as do HR people. And his insights on internal communications resonate with them, but they’re not the buyers, so speaking at these events rarely leads to business opportunities.
In this situation, many experts struggle to reach their intended audience because they approach insight as a music teacher rather than a music producer.
The teacher stands on stage and typically does one of two things:
- He teaches you how to play a musical instrument
- He bemoans the life of a music teacher and his challenges with students
The first resonates with students, the second with peers. But the C-Suite doesn’t want to learn the intricacies of how you do what you do, and they don't care about the challenges of your role.
This music teacher approach can work to get C-Suite clients if you target a vertical, because if enough “students” generate buzz around you and your work, prestige bias kicks in and word reaches the leadership of large businesses in that vertical. But it doesn’t work if you target a horizontal, because there’s no concentration of students in one market generating buzz.
The alternative is to take the stance of a music producer, which is what Rory Sutherland does. He sells “how he thinks,” not “what he does.”
More literally, it’s what Rick Rubin does when he talks about the Creative Act, not “How to run a session and sequence a track.”
CCOs do attend industry events, but Jason doesn’t focus on any single industry. So his work needs to travel across them.
If you’re in Jason’s position, your task is to uncover a focusing question that ties what you do back to the bigger challenges in the business that a CCO or CEO cares about. You map the terrain, but map it to address the C-Suite buyer, not the practitioner in your discipline.
You write a book and a keynote that broadly entertain, with associated “Eureka” moments and stories that resonate with people outside your field.
Rory Sutherland doesn’t get the opportunity to speak at vertical events because he approached them to speak (as far as I’m aware).
He gets the opportunity because he speaks at TEDx, entertains the audience, and then gets booked to speak at compliance, procurement, and automotive events, where each industry's C-suite attends and may be in the market for an ad agency.
Jason’s job isn't to teach a CCO how to do internal communications. It's to speak to a room of CCOs and help them realise that this frustration they are struggling with, which appears unrelated to internal communications, is actually an internal communications problem.