Influence and Media: How Ideas Break Through

Influence is the art of moving people toward an idea.

Think of TED’s tagline: “Ideas worth spreading.” That’s the point. Ideas are the currency of influence.

But influence only matters when an idea eventually becomes something more.

Someone believes it. Shares it. Supports it. Acts on it.

And getting people to act, most of all, is the work of leadership.

Ideas Have to Move

Before thoughts can become actions, ideas have to be communicated.

Communication is essential.

But it isn’t enough.

It needs media.

Influence is the art of moving people toward an idea, and media is the means of moving that idea to them.

Media is the car and the road.

That distinction matters.

Capital-M Media — the sum of all the channels available to us — is the apparatus of transmission. Television, podcasts, social media, newsletters, newspapers, websites, speeches, video, advertising: individually, they are channels. Together, they form the infrastructure through which ideas travel.

They open a door to our collective mind.

But access to the collective mind is not the same as influence.

To influence it, you first have to understand it.

Know the Mind You’re Trying to Reach

What does your audience already know?

What do they believe?

Who do they listen to?

What motivates them?

What assumptions are they carrying with them?

And perhaps most importantly:

What story are they already telling themselves?

Communication doesn’t begin with the message. It begins with the person receiving it.

You have to understand the existing beliefs, expectations, language, and narratives into which your idea will arrive.

As Edward Bernays put the principle nearly eight decades ago:

Make your material fit your public.

But if you really want to make an impact, even that isn’t enough.

Don’t Make Media. Make News.

Effective stories break expectations.

The familiar disappears into the background. The unexpected demands another look.

That means understanding an audience gives you more than the ability to communicate in terms they understand. It also gives you something to push against.

Once you understand your audience’s assumptions, find the expectation.

Then deliberately break it.

Not simply for novelty. Not simply to be provocative.

Break the expectation in a way that makes the idea harder to ignore, easier to remember, or more compelling to reconsider.

That’s the difference between simply producing another piece of media and creating something that moves.

Don’t make media. Make news.

That’s how you break through.

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Source / inspiration: Edward L. Bernays, “The Engineering of Consent,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 250, No. 1 (March 1947), pp. 113–120.

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