Talk is cheap. The difficult part is getting people to listen. Lobbying is how you get officials to listen and thereby influence their policy in your favor.
Yes you see... you don't pay the official. You pay his good friend, who talks to the official. The good friend benefits handsomely from the wage you pay to talk. Of course the fact that the good friend is the interface to the official, and that you need money to pay the good friend, that the official himself benefits handsomely in social capital from his good friends being paid this way, and that without the good friend talking you are utterly fucked : well that's all totally not bribery.
