Unlike an informative speech, where the speaker is charged with making some information known to an audience, in a persuasive speech the speaker attempts to influence people to think or behave in a pa...Unlike an informative speech, where the speaker is charged with making some information known to an audience, in a persuasive speech the speaker attempts to influence people to think or behave in a particular way. As O’Hair and Stewart point out, it makes sense to engage strategies of persuasion when your end goal is to influence any of these things—“beliefs, attitudes, values, and acts”—or to reinforce something that already exists.