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

Some Definitions

Let’s start with some nouns and brief definitions. First we have ‘organization’ as there isn’t much sense to this topic without it, and then descriptions of parties that surround it:

• Organization – an organized group of people with a particular purpose
• Stakeholder – a person or organization with an interest or concern in our organization or something our organization is involved in
• Competitor – an organization with objectives that clash with our own either directly (e.g. fly with us not them) or indirectly (e.g. don’t fly, video conference instead).

Taking a step down into ‘organization’ we find:

• For-profit – primary motivation is to make and distribute surplus funds to owners
• Non-profit – primary motivation is not financial but to achieve some other ends; have a controlling board rather than owners
• Public – primary motivation set by the state and under the operational control of the state.

And, as it has appeared three times above:

• Motivation – reason(s) for acting or behaving in a particular way.

Taking a step down into ‘stakeholder’ we find the normal array:

• Customer – a person or organization that buys goods or services (where ‘buys’ includes paying with one’s attention or time, and includes ‘consumer’).
• Prospect – a person or organization regarded as a potential customer
• Client – a person or organization under the care of another
• Partner – a person or company of importance to an organization in achieving its objectives (e.g. supplier, reseller, ...