There is a sentence I often hear from experts I work with, especially in highly specialised fields such as intellectual property:

“I don’t want to sound like marketing.”

I understand that concern very well.

For many IP experts, visibility already feels slightly uncomfortable. Speaking publicly about one’s perspective adds another layer. The fear of sounding promotional, oversimplified, or too close to corporate messaging is real — and in many cases, it is justified.

Expertise shouldn’t be turned into performance. Complex work shouldn’t be reduced to slogans. And an IP expert should not have to become a marketer or a spokesperson in order to be relevant.

But this doesn’t make the question of voice any easier to avoid.

In a market where decisions are becoming more complex, clients look for orientation. They want to understand how an expert reads a situation — what they consider relevant, where they see risk, which questions they believe should have been raised earlier. They want to sense, before any mandate exists, whether this person helps them think more clearly.

That is the territory where strategic voice matters.

Clarity before frequency

Many experts associate visibility with volume: more posts, more comments, more presence.

But a voice doesn’t begin there. It begins with a much more fundamental question: when you communicate as an expert, what should people understand about the way you think?

This matters particularly in IP. Much of the work happens behind confidentiality, technical complexity, and long-term strategic implications that are difficult to make visible from the outside. Clients may not be able to evaluate every legal or technical detail. But they can sense whether an expert helps them see the situation more clearly, and whether they would trust that expert under pressure.

Sharing information is useful. But the step beyond information is framing: helping your audience understand not just what happened, but why it matters and what it changes.

The problem of invisible thinking

Many highly capable experts communicate in a way that is technically correct but strategically weak.

They explain developments, summarise regulations, describe cases. All of this can be valuable. But if the expert’s own perspective remains invisible, the audience learns something without remembering who helped them understand it.

The expert is present, but not recognisable. Knowledge is visible, but thinking is not.

A clearer point of view changes this, and it doesn’t require provocation or bold claims. Consider the difference:

“This decision may have implications for patent enforcement strategies.”

compared to:

“This decision is a reminder that enforcement strategy cannot be treated as a separate legal step. It needs to be anticipated much earlier, when the commercial risk is still manageable.”

The second version reveals how the expert thinks. It connects a legal development to a business question. It creates direction. And it stays with the reader longer.

Perspective is not the same as provocation

Many experts hesitate here because they associate a stronger voice with being opinionated, with making statements that are too exposed, too likely to divide.

But a strategic voice is not about having a stance on everything. It is about having a consistent interpretive lens.

The difference is meaningful. An opinion evaluates. An interpretive lens makes complexity usable: it identifies what deserves attention, frames what is often underestimated, and asks the questions that should be raised before a decision becomes urgent.

For IP experts, this is particularly relevant. Clients don’t need experts who oversimplify risk. They need experts who can help them navigate complexity without pretending it is simple. A strong voice doesn’t eliminate complexity. It gives it a shape others can work with.

What individual voice adds that institutional communication cannot

Many IP experts communicate within firms, institutions, or corporate environments. Alignment with professional standards and organisational context is necessary, and right.

But individual voice is not a personalised version of the firm’s message.

What it can offer (and what institutional communication rarely provides) is visible judgement: how a specific person thinks through uncertainty, where they locate the real risk, how they connect a legal or technical development to the decisions a client is actually facing.

A firm can state that IP is strategically important. An individual expert can show, concretely, at what point IP decisions begin to shape value creation, before the market sees it. That difference is not cosmetic. It is what makes an expert worth remembering separately from the institution they work within.

What a recognisable voice is built from

A voice doesn’t appear by accident. It develops from a few clear elements.

The first is a defined field of relevance. No expert can be meaningfully associated with everything. The clearer the territory, the easier it becomes for others to know when and why to think of you, not because competence has been narrowed, but because the decision moments where your expertise creates particular value have been made visible.

The second is recurring themes. A voice becomes recognisable through the consistent return to the same underlying concerns and questions. Not the same words, the same intellectual preoccupations. What you keep coming back to, across different developments and different contexts, is what makes your thinking memorable over time.

The third is a clear way of framing. This is often where professional support becomes valuable. Many experts have strong thinking that is not yet structured in a way others can easily follow. They have experience, but not yet a language for it. Developing a voice means translating that inner logic into communication that is clear and repeatable, without simplifying what should remain complex.

A practical test

If you want to understand whether your voice is already working, ask yourself:

When people read or hear your communication, do they only understand what you know, or do they also understand how you help them think?

Clients don’t usually engage an expert because of isolated knowledge. They engage an expert because they trust their judgement in conditions of uncertainty. And judgement becomes visible through voice, through the way you frame a problem, the risks you highlight, the questions you raise before others know to ask them.

This is why voice matters for positioning. It is one of the ways expertise becomes trustworthy before a mandate exists.

Speaking more clearly like yourself

The goal is not to sound more marketable. It is not to adopt the register of thought leaders from other industries.

The goal is to sound more clearly like yourself, at your highest level of usefulness.

For IP experts, this means communicating in a way that preserves rigour while increasing relevance. Making thinking visible without turning every statement into self-promotion. Helping your audience understand not just what is happening, but what it means for the decisions ahead.

Until then, a question to reflect on:

When you speak about your field, do people hear information, or do they hear a way of thinking they would trust in a critical decision?

About the columnist

Giulia Donato
Branding & Communication Advisor | Executive Coach | Lecturer
people & brand strategies
www.donatostrategies.com