The Business of Influence: Reframing Marketing and PR for the Digital Age

Influence Objectives

Some texts present objectives as an output of strategic planning; a list of things the specified strategy insists must get done. However, I’m using objectives here in the context of a precursor to strategy formulation. We have the organization’s vision (a statement about where we want to be) and the organization’s goals (the broad and general statements about how to get there). Objectives are more narrowly but more precisely defined than goals, describing the ‘what’ so that we might then formulate the strategy – the ‘how’.

I said that influence was the task at hand in Chapter 3, before then discussing example outcomes:

• Reputation
• Trust
• Significance
• Purchases
• Expressions of preference or support
• Other actions we want to instil (engagement)
• And greater insight into and articulation of our stakeholders’ situations, needs and desires.

These are example objectives of influencing and being influenced.

The Chief Influence Officer and team will form the organization’s specific influence objectives from the organization’s mission, values and vision. The mission (why the organization exists) identifies the customers the organization exists to serve and what exactly it exists to do for them. The values (what’s important to the organization) distinguish between those influence activities that are desirable and those that are unacceptable. And the vision (what the organization wants to be) informs the objectives for the organization, the attainment of which will take it from ...