On Influence.Capitals, thresholds, value.
The capacity of a name to move decisions it does not command. It can be measured, valued, banked, defended and lost.
The Quotation: how influence is valued
Every engagement of a public name begins with a query, and the machine now answers it in a single paragraph. That paragraph is the quotation.
Machines compile it from what circulates, weighted by what is clicked, and scandal outclicks achievement everywhere. Against it, four classes of buyer extend four forms of credit.
Social
What publics give: attention, trust, mobilisation. The rawest credit, and the source of the other three.
Economic
What markets pay for association: endorsements, licensing, appearances. Fastest to earn, fastest to lose.
Financial
What capital will underwrite: equity, funds, credit terms. Here the name is collateral, and collateral is stress-tested.
Political
What institutions confer: mandates, chairs, honours. The slowest to build, and the only one that cannot be bought.
Value decomposes the same way in all four: response sets the base, meaning the premium, narrative risk the discount. The founding act of the house follows: the quotation can be authored.
The Conversion Chain: from attention to influence
Attention is rented by the scroll and withdrawn without notice; only its conversions accumulate. Influence is attention converted, step by step, into forms that can be banked. Any name can be located where it stalls.
Attention
ImpressionsThe platform lends eyeballs. Rented, perishable, owned by no one.
Recognition
Recall · searchRecall compounds; the name exists outside the feed. The quotation activates here.
Meaning
AssociationNarrative attaches the name to an idea. Where narrative capital is minted.
Trust
Belief · sentimentMeaning survives scandal. Moral licence forms here.
Response
MobilisationPeople act: buy, attend, vote, defend. Influence becomes behaviour.
Credit
Deals · mandatesBuyers price the response; the bankabilities extend their credit.
Standing
PowerThe name moves decisions it does not command. Institutions confer.
The Five Capitals: fifteen pillars
Five capitals, each on three pillars. A capital is only as strong as its weakest pillar; diligence hunts for weakness, never strength.
Performance
The work itself. Sets the floor.
Ability
The distinctive skill no rival reproduces.
Mastery
The record, titles and peer verdict.
Longevity
Durability across cycles.
Narrative
The story strangers tell. Sets the ceiling.
Origin
Where the name comes from, and what it overcame.
Meaning
What it stands for beyond the work.
Authorship
Who controls the telling.
Commercial
The monetisation of attention.
Response
Conversion demonstrated in behaviour.
Pricing power
The rate card and the discipline to refuse.
Portfolio quality
Three right partners compound.
Institutional
Standing conferred by lasting bodies. The ballast.
Seats
Chairs, boards, juries, federations.
Honours
Distinctions sequenced as a ladder.
Succession
Foundations that outlive the work.
Political
Utility to states and causes. Unlocks the final threshold.
Representativity
Whom the name can credibly speak for.
Access
Working entry to ministries and palaces.
Alignment
Managed positioning among blocs.
The Four Thresholds: twelve stages
Influence changes state like water. Each threshold makes the name legible to a new class of buyer, across three stages: Entry, Establishment, Saturation.
The Craftsman
Excellence contained within the discipline. However great the work, the name stops at the edge of its field.
Karabatić: the greatest handballer alive, unknown to the boardroom.
The National Name
The name enters one country’s household conversation. Commercial bankability arrives, and the tabloid economy with it.
Television royalty at home, strangers at the border.
The Cultural Name
The name crosses borders on meaning. The file must read identically in every language a machine reads.
Kidjo, Burna Boy, Stromae: names that travel where their owners never performed.
The Geopolitical Name
The name becomes an asset states value. Its contracts are affairs of state; management here is statecraft.
Mbappé, valued by presidents. Wembanyama, the same passage in progress.
Four Laws of ascent
Performance sets the floor, narrative the ceiling. No name crosses a threshold on performance alone, and none without it.
Every threshold multiplies the value of the name and the caliber of its adversaries. At T2 the enemy is a blogger; at T4, a state.
Thresholds are crossed in the file before the world. The quotation is the signal every buyer shares, and it moves first.
Social credit is earned, economic bought, financial raised, political only conferred. What is bought reprices; what is conferred compounds.
The Protocols: the standing suite of each state
The Craftsman
Every title and record, machine-readable.
The narrative authored before retirement writes it.
First institutional seats.
The National Name
Monthly reading of search and AI, with corrections.
Response measured, valued, argued at the tables.
The tabloid economy monitored daily.
Language, diaspora, cause: the next threshold’s seed.
The Cultural Name
One narrative, identical in 40+ languages.
Chairs and juries as ballast; honours laddered.
Op-eds, keynotes, summit panels.
Coordinated attacks met before the mainstream.
The Geopolitical Name
What each state and public believes it owns.
State-grade information operations, countered.
Rehearsed protocols, response in hours.
Official roles negotiated with ministries.
The Instruments: what the house measures
Six read on every mandate, monthly. A threshold is crossed when the new buyer class transacts twice, unsolicited.
Quotation Share
First-answer surface consistent with the master narrative, per language.
Unprompted Demand
Search and direct traffic with no triggering event.
Response Rate
Engaged action per unit of exposure.
Licence Index
How belief behaves in the week of a hostile event.
Renewal Rate
Partners and institutions that re-engage unprompted.
Conferral Velocity
The pace of seats and honours arriving unsought.
The Limits: what the doctrine does not claim
Contingency keeps its vote
The doctrine governs probabilities, not certainties. Every suite ends in a war room.
The ethical line
The house authors within the truth of the record. A quotation against the truth reprices at the worst hour.
Failure has its theory
Names stall for named reasons: attention unconverted, meaning unminted, response unmeasured, altitude undefended.
The substrate will change
Platforms turn. Whatever answers first, for whoever asks, is the quotation. The instruments re-point; the theory stands.
The grid, applied
Lineage: what the doctrine consolidates
Celebrity as capital
Bourdieu and Driessens: recognizability as an asset exchanged across fields.
The rating industry
Q Scores and the Davie-Brown attributes, re-rated weekly on events.
Soft power
Nye, and the sovereign programmes that treat names as national assets.
Each measures one face. The doctrine consolidates them: capitals to build, thresholds to cross, protocols to run, one quotation to author.
Influence is a portfolio of five capitals on fifteen pillars, quoted daily by machines, banked four ways, and moved across four thresholds in twelve gated stages.
Applied on a fixed cadence: the quotation read monthly, the instruments reviewed each cycle, the protocols adjusted at every gate.
Read it complete, as it is filed.
Doctrine No. 1 in full, seven pages, as a PDF. Subscribe to the house letter to receive it.