Shifting market perception through co-created thought leadership
Why the co-creating is the engine behind the most impactful industry-leading content
Despite what some LinkedIn users may think, no one can just claim they’re an authority in their industry and be taken seriously by those who have put in the time and effort. For true subject matter experts (SMEs), reaching their peers is harder than ever before as their genuine insights are buried in social feeds or stuck in their own Substack mailing lists.
The best way to rise above the noise and the flood of AI content isn’t to produce more, it’s to invite an ecosystem of partners, customers, and collaborators to shape industry-leading opinions together. By shifting from broadcasting to co-creating, SMEs can build deeper relationships, validate each others’ brands, and drive growth for everyone involved.
Modernizing a financial services brand by giving its leaders a new platform
Visa Direct provides critical real-time global payment infrastructure, but FinTech is dominated by agile startups like Airwallex, Wise, and Revolut. As a company that traces their roots back to 1958, Visa’s put in decades of work to become one of the most recognized brands in the world. But in the modern payments space, it is still seen as a legacy brand.
Visa Direct needed a platform to share their advancements alongside the most exciting voices in financial services. Since industry data shows that 83% of senior executives listen to a podcast every week, we worked closely to recruit high-profile guests, strategize, record, and produce a new version of the Money Travels podcast.
Through the collaboration, we updated the series with a new look and feel alongside a larger story arc spanning multiple seasons. This was supported by a strategic shift to secure key guests and influencers while leveraging paid media for reach to elevate the content and drive listeners to the podcast.
With the success of the new strategy, we were also able to engage specific Visa customers. Crafting episodes together and featuring key individuals to co-create stories for our shared audiences and serve as an additional touchpoint for Visa’s customer engagement. Through this project, we’ve seen the Visa brand embrace its role as a technology-forward innovator and the show has reached more than 1M viewers.
Turning expert peers into Google Workspace’s greatest customer advocates
Google Workspace may already be a household name in productivity, but the platform is much more than a word processor or a spreadsheet builder. With Gemini, Google is working to position itself as the world’s leading AI company, and Google Workspace is a core piece of that enterprise transformation.
Moving away from feature parity and shining the spotlight on Google’s most outstanding customers helps the brand let its most advanced partners speak for themselves. In the Transformation Architects video series, Vice President of Google Workspace, Pat McCarthy, is joined by enterprise leaders who are leading the AI revolution.
We worked closely with the Workspace team to identify these “architects,” distill their AI and collaboration strategies, and craft narratives that resonate with audiences beyond their respective industries. By framing these customers as their own leaders, supported by Google solutions rather than carried by them, we keep the focus on real world use cases and organic conversations about how to keep teams aligned on their AI journeys.
While traditional customer success stories can position the inciting brand as the hero, this series allows Google Workspace to serve as a platform for peer-to-peer conversations and information sharing. The conversations both validate Google Workspace’s product value and give its customers a premium platform to share their independent expertise.
Proving that creativity and inclusivity drive real returns
At distillery, we’ve also embraced this community-led approach to sharing expertise. On our podcast, distilled, we’ve met with professionals paving the way for faster, more creative, and more insightful marketing. Across organizations including Google, YouTube, Coca-Cola, and experts on the bleeding edge of AI technology, like Eline Van de Velde, designer of the world’s first AI actress.
These experts are redefining the future of marketing, and with a place to share their knowledge alongside our commitment to creativity made to measure, we’re shaping a new kind of co-created brand identity. We view our relationship with these innovators as more than simply consulting on projects or delivering assets; our contribution to the dialogue is in helping identify perception gaps and executing solutions from start to finish.
With each of these projects, we mapped content to the topics our target audiences are already discussing. Through securing the right industry voices to elevate these brands, we build authority through positioning: our experts know and work with other experts.
They listen, engage, and build collaborative relationships with the smartest people in other rooms, so they always have new information to bring to their next conversation. And through delivering high-quality, human-centric thought leadership products (like premium podcasts and marketing strategies), we can capture the attention of even the busiest senior decision-makers.