Thought Leadership Example: Equinox from Equilibrium

If you know me, then you’ll know I’m a sucker for great examples of thought leadership in printed form – I love online marketing and SEO, but I like things offline too! I love creating such things, and if you saw my office today, you’ll see that I love collecting it, too.

Some revile at the term ‘thought leadership’, but until someone gives me a better phrase, that’s what I’ll call it. So there.

There are certainly way too few companies that engage in quality thought leadership aimed towards existing clients and prospects alike – and companies that don’t engage in quality, frequent thought leadership material never seem to catch those that do. Coincidence? Nope.

This week I stumbled upon Equilibrium’s half-yearly publication, Equinox. Equilibrium are a wealth management company from Wilmslow (and Chester), a company that I was aware of from various networking groups, conversations etc. around the city and south Manchester.

However, I didn’t know that they published such a document – and other roundup and investment periodicals. Just by knowing that a company publishes periodically like this automatically means (to me) that they are very likely to have been around for a while, have good ethics, are confident in their own skin, and have a good culture etc.

How do I come to this conclusion? I’ve worked for bad people from bad companies in the past – bad companies almost always take shortcuts at some point of their journeys, and find it extremely difficult indeed to produce anything that has consistency – especially something that is seen as not to affect the bottom line directly.

So, there’s a tip from me (should you want it) – if a company publishes in-depth content on a periodical basis – and has done for a while – then it’s usually a very good sign that the company does things the right way in general.

Anyway, back to Equinox. The report that I have downloaded and printed (I’m old school), is a 44-page document that is surprisingly readable for someone – who like me – is not financially savvy at all. I did expect the magazine to be hard to read, full of stuffy content, but by and large, the content is written in a way that is not at all elitist. Of course there are some sections that go into detail about things like “alternative equity”, and model portfolio returns – which are way beyond my own comprehension. However, this is measured against really accessible features concerning Generation Z, retired clients, and a surprisingly good piece about AI in finance.

If I was a client of Equilibrium, receiving this document would help to ensure that I was using the right company to manage my finances for the reasons that I mentioned previously – and I’m sure that this content does exactly that. If I was in the position of choosing between two wealth management companies and one gave me this document, and the other just a brochure of services, then there would only be one winner.

As a fan of thought leadership and brand publishing, it probably doesn’t get much better than the Equinox piece.