In my last essay for IPRA, I argued that attention has become the new B2B currency, and that brands must earn it rather than buy it. That raised an obvious next question, one our clients ask constantly: once you have someone’s attention, how does it become influence?

So we asked. Between July and September this year, AIM B2B surveyed 152 business leaders who work in or focus on Japan and the wider Asia-Pacific region. More than half are CEOs, managing directors or other C-suite executives. We wanted to understand how influence comes into being, and what content and storytelling actually contribute to it.

The short answer: content can open doors, but people walk through them.

Influence is a trust outcome

Influence clearly matters. 83% of respondents said influencing business partners is essential or very important to their organization’s success. Only three of the 152 said it wasn’t important.

What stood out was why it matters. Asked how influence contributes to business success, 78% said it builds trust and reputation. Creating preference among customers or partners (49%) and supporting purchasing decisions (35%) came well behind.

For PR professionals, that’s worth pausing on. Leaders aren’t describing influence as a sales lever. They’re describing it in the language of reputation, which is our home ground.

Connection, relationship, influence

Respondents also confirmed what many of us sense: influence grows in stages. 80% said business relationships are more influential than business connections, and 55% said significantly more so.

A connection gives you access, awareness and a chance to interact. A relationship adds trust, understanding, mutual value and repeated interaction. Asked what turns one into the other, 82% chose trust and reliability, followed by understanding the other party’s needs (47%) and repeated interaction over time (42%). Useful and relevant content was picked by just 9%.

That doesn’t mean leaders dismiss content. It means they rarely credit it with building the relationship itself.

Where content earns its place

Content does its strongest work early. 72% said it creates awareness and attention, 70% said it demonstrates expertise and credibility, and 71% have contacted or connected with someone because of a piece of content. Inside an existing relationship, its most-cited role is keeping you visible between interactions.

Among respondents who think good content has an effect, 71% said it most often changes how credible an organization seems. Only 12% said it changes what people finally decide. Content earns the credibility decisions draw on. Something else usually closes them.

Quality changes the picture. Asked about high-quality content specifically, 51% said it can significantly influence perceptions or decisions. And among those who think most content fails to influence, half blamed content that is generic.

Based on these patterns, our report proposes a working model of content as overlapping layers rather than a single funnel:

• Signal: getting noticed through awareness, expertise and credibility
• Catalyst: getting something moving, whether interest, conversation or action
• Connection: creating understanding and common ground
• Relationship enabler: supporting consistency, proof and continued interaction
• Contributor to influence: helping change a perception, preference or decision

It’s a hypothesis drawn from the survey pattern, not a validated framework. But it helps explain why a single piece of content rarely does everything we ask of it.

Storytelling works when there’s substance underneath

74% of respondents see a connection between storytelling and influence. Most say it makes complex ideas easier to understand (59%) and creates a stronger human connection (57%).

But when we asked what makes content more effective, useful insight (48%) came first, ahead of credible expertise (32%) and telling a story (31%). Storytelling’s effect, respondents said, depends most on relevance to the audience (63%) and on quality and authenticity (60%).

Sakura Kawakami, founder and CEO of Eveil Advisory, put it simply: “Storytelling does not create influence, it creates understanding.” Our job is to make sure there’s something worth understanding.

Ross Rowbury, senior managing director at Nomura Holdings, whom I quoted in my last essay, described how the pieces compound: memorable, relevant content leads to richer closeness between parties, which develops into relationships, “and the trust and rapport that results leads to influence.”

Japan is a harder room

Our sample was weighted towards Japan (49% of respondents), which let us look, carefully, at differences by market. Respondents in regional Asia-Pacific roles were most likely to call content an important source of influence (43%), against 23% of Japan-focused respondents and 14% of those in global roles. Japan-focused respondents were also the only group where some said content has only limited influence.

The bases are small, so these are directional rather than market-level findings. But they match what we see in Tokyo every day: content may start the conversation, yet trust is built in person and over time. Anyone running a single regional content programme across Asia should expect it to land differently in each market.

The measurement gap

Here the findings become uncomfortable. Organizations judge content mainly on leads (64%), revenue (49%), engagement (47%) and reach (45%). Only 22% judge it by whether it changed perceptions, preferences or decisions, and 20% by whether it built new or stronger relationships.

So the outcomes leaders want from influence are the ones least often measured. The split by role is telling too: 25% of C-suite respondents said their organization judges content by the relationships it builds, against 6% of marketing and communications leaders. The bases are small, but the direction is worth a conversation with your CEO.

There’s also a paradox. 63% have seen content influence a business preference or decision, and a third say it changed one of their own. Yet only 23% call content an important source of influence. When content contributes, who gets the credit: the content, the person who explained it, the relationship manager or the organization’s reputation? Our survey couldn’t answer that, and it’s the focus of our next phase of research.

What this means for PR

Five practical implications stand out.

• Avoid generic content. Test every brief by asking whether a competitor could publish the same piece. If it could, start again.
• Pair stories with proof. When respondents named what matters as much as content or more in building a relationship, 62% chose demonstrated business value and 58% personal trust.
• Design content around real conversations. Its main role inside a relationship is keeping you visible between touchpoints, so plan it alongside client dialogue and sales follow-up.
• Equip internal champions. Give the people who advocate for you a clear narrative they can retell to finance, procurement and colleagues. Our survey didn’t test this, so treat it as an experiment.
• Measure perception change. Agree with leadership on what content is for, then add one simple question to client conversations, such as “Has anything we’ve published changed how you see us?” Track the answers over time.

When we started, our question was simple: can content create influence? Our answer is that it can but rarely does on its own. Influence needs content and storytelling, but it also needs proof, trust, time and, above all, people.

That’s good news for our profession. Relationships, credibility and reputation have always been PR’s business. The data suggests they are also where influence is made.