Thought leadership seems to have become one of the industry’s biggest go-to reputation plays. But does it live up to its purpose of provoking thought and action? Is it becoming synonymous with generic content marketing in a world where every senior leader has a point of view, every brand wants authority and every platform has become a publishing channel?
In an era when leaders are trying to establish credibility, build visibility, demonstrate trust, highlight expertise and inspire change from a place of licence and authority, how can thought leadership stand out from the noise of opinions in a crowded room?
In a world where people are increasingly leaning into artificial intelligence (AI) tools for insight, inspiration and to inspect the quality of their content delivery, what guardrails are necessary to differentiate between ‘goosebump-inducing’ thought leadership and the AI slop that’s populating social media feeds? How can you give people reading thought leadership something that is actually worth their time?
Several brand-side marketers and senior agency leaders gathered to answer these questions, among others, at a round table discussion hosted by Campaign Middle East in partnership with Bloomberg Media at Campaign House at Cannes, France, during the week of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2026.
Contributing to this discussion, moderated by Campaign Middle East Editor Anup Oommen, were:
- Khaled AlShehhi, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications, UAE Government Media Office;
- Passant El Ghannam, Chief Marketing Officer – Middle East and Africa, Kraft Heinz;
- Muhannad Kadi, Chief Marketing Officer, King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre;
- Mashal Shahbik, Executive Director – Marketing and Events, Qatar Foundation;
- Akanksha Goel, Founder and Board Advisor, We Are Social;
- Ghassan Kassabji, CEO, Impact BBDO Dubai, and CGO, Impact BBDO MENA;
- Diego Florez, AI Creative Director, Core42;
- Jason Murison, Creative Lead,DAMAC Properties;
- Amit Nayak, Managing Director – MEA, Bloomberg Media; and
- Phil Robinson, Head of Data Science & Insights – EMEA, Bloomberg Media.
At the outset, the leaders discussed what separates a real point of view from corporate wallpaper. The answer, the leaders said, came down to credibility, usefulness, accountability and human judgement.
The room also largely accepted that AI can accelerate research, sharpen structure and make communication more accessible. Yet, the strongest contributions circled back to one simple truth: tools can help carry the load, but they cannot own the belief.
The starting point for thought leadership: value and licence
The first challenge is purpose and perception. Too much executive content is judged by visibility rather than by whether it has changed anything for the reader. The stronger test is whether it pushes someone to reconsider, question or act.
Passant El Ghannam, Chief Marketing Officer – MEA, Kraft Heinz, argued that impact does not always need to appear as a hard conversion. Sometimes, the value lies in shifting someone’s lens, even slightly.
“If a piece of thought leadership influenced someone, if it makes you think or offers a different perspective, then I think that’s good content,” she said.
That raises the bar. If the work is only useful to the person publishing it, then it is closer to self-promotion than leadership. Real value begins when the audience walks away with something they can use.
Amit Nayak, Managing Director – MEA, Bloomberg Media, said the market is moving from mere recognition towards usefulness, referencing a Bloomberg Media report that is soon to be published.
Nayak raised key questions, asking: “How do you create value for those engaging with the thought leadership? So, what does the data show? How can you add credibility that makes it something that’s useful for them, so that they engage with it deeper?”
Several participants returned to the same point: authority cannot be borrowed. Thought leadership must be owned by those who have the licence or authority to speak on the topic. Especially in categories such as government, investment, healthcare and business, the person speaking matters as much as the idea itself.
Khaled AlShehhi, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications, UAE Government Media Office, explained, “Thought leadership that can convince me, influence me, change my mind or unlock an incredible idea must first come from a credible sort of license, someone who has the authority to share their thoughts from expertise and industry leadership.”
This is where the industry needs more discipline. Leaders at the round table agreed that the strongest pieces usually come from people who have earned the right to speak because they have lived the issue, worked through the problem or carried the consequence of the decision.
Accountability separates thought leadership from content marketing
One of the most interesting provocations during the discussion came from the idea that true thought leadership requires a claim that can be tested. If there is no risk, no position and no possibility of being proved wrong, the piece may be polished, but it is not brave.
Akanksha Goel, Founder and Board Advisor, We Are Social, compared thought leadership with the role of a doctor, where responsibility matters as much as knowledge.
“The reason you need a doctor is because someone needs to take accountability for what’s happening to you. Someone needs to own what decisions you have been influenced into,” Goel said.
This principle applies directly to public points of view.
Goel added, “For thought leadership to drive action, we need to start looking at thought leadership not as a piece of content, but as positions that people can stake a claim. Only if it can be falsified does it become leadership.”
That is an important distinction. A trend report, opinion column or leadership post should not be a decorative object. It should put a flag in the ground. If nobody can challenge it, it probably has not gone far enough.
AI can assist, but it cannot own the tension
Leaders were pragmatic about the role of AI in thought leadership. There was little love lost for slow, manual processes. Most participants accepted that AI can help with research, structure, translation, drafting and internal efficiency.
Diego Florez, AI Creative Director, Core42, described how internal AI systems can help employees turn complex topics into clearer material.
“There are tools and agents that can help everybody with thought leadership, ensuring that it’s aligned with what people should be talking out, that it’s filtered, and that it’s legally compliant,” Florez said.
Yet the question is not whether AI can produce coherent thought leadership; it is whether the end result still feels connected to audiences and their beliefs.
Ghassan Kassabji, CEO, Impact BBDO Dubai, and CGO, Impact BBDO MENA, drew that line clearly.
“AI helps us a lot with data analysis and scaffolding. But it should never own a point of view. AI has made content free to access and produce, but has made conviction a scarcity,” Kassabji said.
Jason Murison, Creative Lead, DAMAC Properties, made a similar point from a creative perspective. He explained how AI can map the landscape, but the human role is to find the missing angle.
“AI is a good tool to use in thought leadership, when it comes to finding out what everybody is talking about and what is trending, but only we as humans can decide what we need to talk about, especially when no one is saying what needs to be said,” Murison said.
Phil Robinson, Head of Data Science and Insights – EMEA, Bloomberg Media, referenced findings from the Bloomberg Media report, which stated how AI is stronger at scanning the present than imagining the future.
“AI is scanning what’s available, but it’s not defining what’s next,” Robinson said.
Where AI struggles is where thought leadership often begins: in lived experience, tension and emotional truth. A strong idea often names something people feel but have not yet articulated. That is why vulnerability can make executive content more memorable than polish.
Goel said the pieces that resonate most are often the ones where the writer risks being more open.
“You have to name the tension that, or you have to call out the tension that people feel, but no one else has called out,” Goel said.
Mashal Shahbik, Executive Director – Marketing and Events, Qatar Foundation, argued that movements do not begin with tools, but with people who understand other people.
“I believe that leadership is about changing and shifting mindset on culture, and AI would never be able to do that to an extent that it can inspire a movement within culture,” Shahbik said.
For Shahbik, the emotional layer is not optional. She added, “You need someone to feel for people; someone to have empathy. That’s where thought leadership stems from. AI is great at spotting patterns or even predicting certain outcomes, but it is not able to actually feel the emotion that thought leadership generates.”
Guardrails, not paralysis
Leaders did not suggest freezing AI out of the process. Instead, the stronger argument was for clearer boundaries, better supervision and more conscious use of AI tools.
Lean into AI for help, but not at the cost of quietly erasing authorship.
Muhannad Kadi, Chief Marketing Officer, King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre, made an excellent point that the industry is still at the initial stages of its AI journey and, as such, should not pretend to know where the limits lie.
“I think it’s a bit early to draw the line, because we are still in the process of exploring AI capabilities,” Kadi said.
Murison suggested that the focus should be less on prohibition and more on safety and responsibility.
“I don’t think it’s about drawing a line necessarily; I think it’s about setting proper guardrails,” Murison said.
Kadi used a simple analogy to describe the relationship between people and AI. “AI has not arrived to replace the leaders creating thought leadership. If thought leadership is the plane, then leaders are the pilots, and AI is merely a co-pilot,” Kadi said.
On the other hand, leaders also pointed to the dangers of over-reliance on AI – especially when it places ownership of the strategy in the hands of people who don’t have the licence or authorship to speak on a topic.
As AI makes production easier, the risk is not only sameness; the risk is also misinformation. If everyone uses similar tools, trained on similar sources, to produce similar structures, the market may end up with a sea of neatly written emptiness that unwary people may act on out of context and at the wrong time.
Florez also warned that younger generations may skip the difficult craft stage altogether.
He said, “The thing that worries me most, as I’m working with new generations, is the risk we run of losing originality due to an increasing dependence on AI.”
Florez also warned that a fixation on speed could strip away the reflection needed for meaningful work. He asks, “If nobody stops to analyse and question the AI response, but considers it as a single source of truth, are we communicating what we need to communicate?”
El Ghannam offered a practical test for authenticity. AI assistance is acceptable if the result still sounds like the person behind it.
“If the thought leadership piece still feels like me, and is written in my tone, with my words, in the way I talk in real life – and everyone knows I wouldn’t use big words even to communicate a complex argument – then it’s okay,” El Ghannam said.
AlShehhi explained how AI tools are especially relevant in a region where many senior leaders work across languages and cultures.
“The most important thing, I think, in whatever we write is whether it communicates what is on our mind,” AlShehhi said. “The voice does not need to be grammatically perfect to be powerful. It needs to be recognisable, honest, insightful and grounded.”
Murison, who began his career as a copywriter, added that substance matters more than the polished surface. For an industry that often overvalues polish, one of the round table’s most refreshing takeaways was that perfect prose is not the main test.
A piece can be rough around the edges and still matter if it carries a strong insight, a lived story or a credible point of view written by those with licence to do so.
Consistency is built through curiosity
For leaders who publish regularly, the task is not simply to produce more; it is to keep finding what genuinely deserves attention. That requires curiosity, discipline and the willingness to evolve.
Nayak described this as a continuous process of improving the way stories are built for audiences.
“I think it’s a journey, because I don’t think there’s a fixed way,” Nayak said.
Explaining that stronger work often combines evidence with a more human frame, he said, “That could be with adding a layer of data that makes it more credible, but then also humanising the story, which is how you move people and change perception.”
For Kassabji, the starting point is personal inspiration rather than a publishing quota.
“I write about things that inspire me,” Kassabji revealed, breaking the mindset of maintaining a content calendar. The strongest pieces often begin with a spark, not a slot.
The conversation also opened a more hopeful possibility. If used well, AI could not only help edit or organise existing material, but also help publishers identify overlooked people with valuable lived experience who have not had access to the usual platforms.
Goel suggested that AI could widen the pool of contributors rather than simply speed up production for the already visible. “Maybe one of the things that AI can help publishers with is get better at finding that right thought,” Goel said.
She added that this could help surface people who have depth but not exposure. “What about someone who’s in the industry 20 years ago, has got the lived experience, doesn’t have the exposure, but AI now helps us get smarter with the content?” Goel asked.
Leaders also pointed to a more constructive way to think about the role of AI in thought leadership – not as a machine that replaces judgement, but as a radar that helps find signals humans may have missed.
Thought leadership, when done well, is not a volume game. It is closer to a lighthouse than a loudspeaker; its value lies in helping others navigate stormy seas rather than comparing who has the more powerful light on the shore.
The round table’s clearest message was that thought leadership must bring licence, authority, humanity, tension, usefulness and accountability to the table. The tools may change, but the essence remains deeply human.
