How to get more 'soft power' to your elbow

Soft Power, a term coined by Harvard academic Joseph Nye, originated in politics but is perfectly tuned to the consumer environment.

How to get more ‘soft power’ to your elbow

Melanie Howard

Attraction and seduction, rather than domination and coercion, are the keys to persuasion, says Melanie Howard

I'm devoting this piece to what we call an nVitro trend – newly hatched from our own trends laboratory – which is a crossover from the political sphere but perfectly tuned to the consumer environment. We call it The Rise of Soft Power, a term coined by Harvard academic Joseph Nye in his 2004 book Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics.

Nye argues that the means of...

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