— thought leadership stats
of B2B decision-makers say a company’s thought leadership is a more trustworthy basis for judging its capability than its marketing materials or product sheets.
of C-suite executives say a competitor’s thought leadership has led them to reconsider their current supplier relationship, and 25% have actually ended or scaled back one because of it.
— social
Thought
Leadership
Buyers trust the person before they trust the page. Right now, your best thinking never leaves the boardroom.
Most of what makes your business good at what it does is sitting in the heads of your leaders: judgment calls, pattern recognition, the version of the story that only comes from having actually done the work. None of it reaches the market, because nobody’s built the bridge between what they know and where buyers are actually looking.
Thought leadership is that bridge. It takes real expertise and turns it into content people genuinely want to read, published under names your buyers already trust.
— What is thought leadership?
Sounds like a person. Not a press release.
Thought leadership is the practice of putting your senior people's real expertise into the market: their opinions, predictions, arguments and lessons learned, published under their own name. A proper thought leadership strategy starts with a real, specific point of view, something your director believes, has evidence for, and would defend in a room full of sceptics. Some people still call this social media for executives. We think of it as executive thought leadership: less about posting schedules, more about giving genuine expertise somewhere to go.
When done well, executive visibility is the reason a prospect takes your call before business development even reaches out. Done badly, or not at all, that authority stays locked inside your organisation, and a competitor's director fills the gap instead. Giraffe's thought leadership services exist to close that gap: turning what your senior team already knows into content people actually read, consistently, without burning out the person doing the talking.
— human-first thinking
Trust doesn't come from a logo; it comes from a person willing to have a view. Human-first thought leadership means the view stays theirs, not the brand's.
— Who is it for?
Built for leaders whose voice can be the deciding factor.
Executives
You set the direction. We get your reasoning in front of the people deciding to trust it.
Leaders
Your expertise runs the business daily. We turn it into content the market can actually see.
Entrepreneurs
You're building the business and the brand at once. We help your voice carry both.
Personal
You already have an audience. We help you say something with your personal brand.
— How we do it
Most thought leadership fails for one reason: it asks too much of people with no time to give it.
Ask a busy director for "a thousand words on the industry outlook", and you'll wait three months for a first draft, if one arrives at all. That's not a lack of opinions. It's that writing takes time nobody senior actually has, and most agencies build a process that pretends otherwise.
So we don't ask anyone to write. We interview instead, on video where we can, so we get both footage and words from a single conversation. The questions are built to draw out what someone actually thinks, not a blank "any thoughts on the industry?" We watch what's already being argued about in your sector on social media, then bring it to your director for a response. Their job is to have an opinion. Ours is translating it into something that reads well and builds trust.
The process
01 Listen
We start with a single interview, usually on a video call, never a written brief. That draws out real opinions in their own words, plus short clips we can reuse as video content, all inside one 45-minute conversation nobody has to prepare for.
02 Translate
We take what they said and shape it against what's already being argued about in their industry on social, so it lands as relevant, not random. It stops sounding like a transcript and starts sounding like something worth stopping to read.
03 Publish
Every piece goes back to your director for approval, which takes minutes, not hours, then goes out under their name on a steady cadence, video clips included where we have them. Buyers see a pattern, not a one-off post.
04 React
We track what actually lands, not just likes but replies, profile visits and the conversations it starts, and bring that straight into the next interview along with whatever's live in the industry conversation. Nothing goes stale.
— FAQ
Ask us
anything
The questions we get asked about thought leadership, answered for you.
Isn't this just ghostwriting?
Sort of, but not the kind that gives ghostwriting a bad name. We don’t invent opinions and put a name on them. Every piece starts with your director talking, on camera or on a call, and we write from what they actually said. Nothing goes out that they wouldn’t say in a room full of clients. Think of it as translation, not authorship.
We already post on LinkedIn ourselves. Why do we need this?
Posting occasionally isn’t the same as having a strategy. Most executives who post themselves do it in bursts, usually after a conference or a strong opinion at 11 pm, then go quiet for two months. We build a steady cadence tied to what your buyers actually care about, without adding another task to your week. If you’re already consistent and it’s working, you probably don’t need us.
What am I actually paying for here?
A recurring interview with your named expert, turned into a set number of LinkedIn posts each month, video clips where the interview allows it, and a simple report on what performed and why. You’re not paying for a content calendar template. You’re paying for someone to extract, shape and publish real thinking on a schedule you don’t have to manage yourself.
How much time does this actually take from our director?
One interview, roughly 45 minutes, every two to four weeks, depending on volume. Reviewing drafts takes minutes, not hours, because the words are already theirs. That’s the whole time commitment. If a service is asking your director for more than that regularly, it’s not built for how busy people actually work.
Our MD isn't comfortable on camera. Does that rule this out?
No, and honestly, most of the executives we work with feel exactly the same way at the start. That’s why the whole approach is built around talking, not writing or performing. Social media for executives doesn’t have to mean scripted video pieces; if that’s uncomfortable, a phone call works just as well as an on-camera interview. The output can be text-only, video-led, or both. We shape the format around the person, not the other way round.
Is this just LinkedIn, or other platforms too?
Mostly LinkedIn, because that’s where your buyers are actually making decisions. Where we get video from the interview, we’ll cut shorter clips for other platforms too if that’s useful for recruitment or wider brand awareness, but the core programme is built around LinkedIn, because that’s where B2B thought leadership actually gets read.
What's your director's expertise worth if nobody can hear it?
Let's talk about what thought leadership could look like for your business.
— Complementary Services
Other ways we can help.
Services that work best alongside strong thought leadership.
01
Employee Advocacy
Thought leadership gives your leadership team a voice. Employee advocacy does the same for everyone else, turning the rest of your people into a distribution network that buyers trust more than your company page ever will.
02
LinkedIn Ads
Once your director's best posts are proven to land organically, LinkedIn Ads puts money behind the ones that are already working, reaching the buyers who follow nobody on your team yet.
03
Creative Ideation
Thought leadership runs dry without fresh angles. Creative ideation is where we source the formats, hooks and ideas that keep your director's content interesting instead of repeating the same three opinions on a loop.