Is influence ‘boring’?

I’ve long enjoyed the irony of Richard Holway’s Boring awards. Boring awards are bestowed on those firms that manage 10 or more consecutive years of earnings-per-share growth. The idea that boring is desirable is inspired.

So I was reading a post on super-influencers, such as the speakers at TED. Then I looked at The Telegraph’s list of the most influential people in UK industry which, again, appears as a list of super-influencers, but of little practical value to marketers.

It turns out that real influence, where purchase decisions are informed, scoped, agreed and validated, is wielded not by charismatic CEOs and thought leaders. Instead, decisions are usually influenced at the coal face by ‘normal’ people, senior-to-middle grade professionals and experts, with the real-world experience relevant to the decision at hand.

It’s actually quite boring. Where boring is a desirable attribute.

The Telegraph’s Most Powrful People list

Ooh! Another list of influencers! How novel. For anyone who’s thinking of using this as the basis for an influencer program, think on these questions:

1. What’s the basis on which these influencers were chosen? As far as I can tell, the methodology appears to be: pick the top firms in the UK in each sector, find out the name of the CEO, include on list, randomise names on list to mask lack of objective rationale.
2. Can this list be useful in your marketing campaigns? What are the chances of you creating an influencer program with the list’s constituents? Could you ever arrange a meeting with even ten people on the list?
3. Do the list’s constituents actually influence your customers’ and prospects’ purchase decisions? Are they often in front of real customers, informing and persuading, or are they busy running multi-million pound businesses?

The one good thing about the Telegraph list is that is may get you thinking about who really influences your customers.

Why you can’t guess your influencers

We often play a game with our clients. Write down the names of the top ten influencers on your market (or segment). If you guess correctly you don’t pay us.

It’s a safe bet – we’ve never encountered a close guess. But why?

I think there are two possible reasons. Firstly, most people have never thought about the question before. Although intuitively they know that their prospects are being influenced by a range of individuals, they’ve never considered who these people might be.

The second reason is that when considering influence, they use one, or maybe two, dimensions to measure influence. The most common ones used are frequency and market reach/awareness. Sometime they’ll use connectedness, especially if they’re considering the influence of bloggers.

The problem is that influence is multi-dimensional. Currently we use four dimensions of influence, and are piloting a further four (from which we expect two to be practical and consistently measurable).

It also explains why Bill Gates and Steve Jobs rarely turn up on our influencer rankings, along with the other obvious CEO of top companies. These individuals may influence industry trends and directions, but they rarely affect real decisions at the coal face.