“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Not according to Doug Pinkham’s thoughtful blog, entitled A War of Words, in which the Public Affairs Council president details how words are used by marketers, politicians and strategists as a powerful weapon of influence.

But are words the most basic component of influence?

We submit that they aren’t, not entirely, at least.

In our system of influence strategy, words are merely the vehicle through which influence strategy is conveyed. Words, after all, are malleable, and their meanings often change. But the strategies that underlie them do not.

So how does one get around the “word trap” as we might call it?

To the point of this post – which we hope is interpreted only as a complement (and compliment) to Pinkham’s perspective – is that words are better understood through influence strategies, or “plays.”

Influence strategies are the 25 irreducible components of influence that shape minds, blunt competitive attacks and flip conversations to a player’s advantage. They’ve existed for millennia and have been alluded to in such noteworthy texts as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and even The Bible. Take these two examples:

• When Sun Tzu wrote, “Feign disorder, and crush [the enemy],” he was surely describing a play we’ve defined as the Red Herring.
• When Luke wrote the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15. 11-32), he employed a Recast play on the importance of loyalty that aligned neatly with early Christian doctrine. He then used family as a symbolic reference – i.e., a Screen play – to resonate more closely with his readers.

Of course, we would never claim to have invented these strategies. Rather, we jumped on the opportunity to classify and organize them into a rational taxonomy. We named our finished product The Standard Table of Influence Strategies and published it in The Elements of Influence. To the politicos and policy wonks who read Pinkham, one might interpret it more as “the first periodic table of spin.”

To us, and we hope to you, the benefit of identifying these elements of influence and organizing them is two-fold:

• The first reason is that organization makes the job of any practitioner of influence easier. Pinkham writes about the messaging expert. To that point, we would advise the messaging expert that by knowing that there’s a spectrum of strategies to which words can be assigned, he or she could focus on making sure the most appropriate words are chosen to correspond with the underlying strategy.
• The second reason is more analytical. With definitions and taxonomies now assigned, the influence strategist – or the messaging expert – can begin to think more methodologically about how a competitor will counter (or collaborate) with a given play. The advantage is to be able to anticipate, or predict, a marketplace rival’s next move and see patterns and tendencies begin to develop that were never before perceptible. The advantage to using our system is that the messaging strategist is now able to stay one step ahead of the competition.

To return to Pinkham’s post, let’s look at some of the classic examples he uses to make his point and see if they can be explained through influence strategy:

• In his second paragraph, Pinkham recalls Herbert Hoover’s uninspiring rallying cry, “We Are Turning the Corner!” as the country sank further into the Great Depression. Using The Standard Table, one would immediately recognize this play to be a Filter – def., a strategic omission – albeit a highly disingenuous one.
• Now, to query further, one can look at the definition of Filter and see the best practices for how to counter this play. To wit, the first recommended stratagem for countering a Filter is to run a Call Out.

Sure enough, four years later, and in only two words, Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran a Call Out on Hoover’s strategy, with the help of a second play, an emotion-invoking play called the Screen, and encouraged voters to “Remember Hoover!”

In the interest of brevity, here’s a quick summary of some of the other seminal events referenced in Pinkham’s post and the influence strategies that underlie them:

• Barack Obama’s campaign slogan, “Change We Can Believe In” was a defining Preempt play, allowing Team Obama to define and determine the election’s criteria on its terms.
• Republican consultant Frank Luntz is a master of Recasts and Labels, re-characterizing key phrases such as “global warming” to “climate change” and “eavesdropping” into “electronic intercepts.” The outcome is that he’s now able to shape their meanings for his party’s advantage.

To Pinkham’s credit, he runs a series of great plays in the final four bullet points of his piece that warrant repeating:

• On Democrats, he runs a Mirror + Ping combination play to point out that populist campaign techniques can easily backfire.
• On Republicans, he runs a veiled Call Out to note that rhetoric is easy to offer but rings hollow without solid alternatives.
• On both parties, he runs a declaratory Fiat + Screen on the dangers of pandering to backdrops such as the economy and the environment.
• On lobbyists, he runs an teasing Ping to predict that their jobs will only become more difficult if they don’t change their tactics.

Fantastic plays, Mr. Pinkham. Thanks for offering them up.

Posted by: John Koval

Photo Credit: www.mediablather.wordpress.com