IT-supported campaign management also in change?

What is fluid, IT-supported campaign management?

IT-supported, so-called “fluid” campaign management is the new wonder weapon of campaign strategists. Intelligent, learning algorithms permanently identify target groups and adapt the approach to the specific interests and needs of the target groups.

The mechanism is simple in principle and every Amazon customer knows it: ‚Customers who bought this product also bought product xy‘. These algorithms now have incredible predictive power and can play on different social media at the same time. After ten likes on Facebook, an algorithm can now draw a more reliable personality profile than a Big 5 personality test. Our permanent traces on the internet paint a much more precise and dynamic picture of us, which I am constantly refining.
Fluid or IT-supported campaigns are based on this and continuously adapt their approach to these profiles. They ‚crack‘ the codes of these communities. They group and form communities, develop strategies, use multipliers and control target groups practically on an individual level with pinpoint accuracy – both emotionally and cognitively.

Donald Trump’s election success, which was based in part on such strategies from ‚Cambridge Analytics Inc.‘, was the most impressive proof of the effectiveness of IT-supported campaigns.

How effective is fluid campaign management for internal organizational change projects?

Change projects are primarily about changing the experience and behavior of people – employees – in a targeted manner and “aligning” them with a new goal.
Aren’t employees much more than a community in a fluid campaign project?

There is a lot to be said against it! And yet there are some analogies between modern communication and change management.

First of all, there are two reasons why these mechanisms are not so easy to transfer to change management:

Firstly, the success of these fluid campaigns is based on the law of large numbers. The algorithms create profiles by linking a wide variety of data sources in social media. With the exception of a few large corporations, the number of employees in most companies is manageable. Access to data sources such as social media is more limited for employers – at least not for unlimited use.

Secondly, fluid campaigns are also based on the fact that they are not transparent and therefore not initially recognizable as marketing strategies. The fact that my favorite TV series star with a Mercedes convertible appears on my Instagram account at a certain point in time – you have to come up with that first!

In a change campaign, on the other hand, the sender is your own employer. Messages in internal change campaigns are directly and visibly interest-driven:
Become more agile! Accept new role requirements! Leave your silo thinking behind! Collaborate internationally! Accept the new Chinese shareholder! Change your management culture! Think in terms of solutions and service – no longer in terms of products!
As an employee – unlike on the web – I have a multitude of observation points, a holistic, ’systemic‘ perception, a sixth sense of where the messages come from exactly and how consistent they are with what I experience every day.

Although a lot can be done with data mining and artificial intelligence in companies in the future – for example in the areas of corporate learning, competence or knowledge management – it is highly questionable whether internal communities can be formed and ‚controlled‘ as easily as external ones.
Nevertheless, there are a lot of things that can be learned from the experience of fluid IT-supported marketing campaigns for change management:

1. It’s the emotions, stupid! Fluid marketing algorithms work with emotions, needs and fears, constantly profiling personalities, preferences, expectations and attitudes and delivering targeted impulses. This is the final ‚proof‘ of every change manager’s assumption: emotion and cognition are at least equally important! The ‚flat‘ expectation of corporate communication to ’send‘ (rigid, cognitive) messages to specific target groups in the company should finally be a thing of the past. Employees are too informed, too intelligent, too reflexive to accept transparent internal communication campaigns. Employees question senders and intentions directly! They are therefore not so easily a willing ‚object‘ of internal communication with the charm of ‚court reporting‘. So no more messages – target group thinking! Credibility is created differently – namely through relevance, quality and direct involvement (what’s in it of me?)!
2. “Walk the talk”. Social media ‚blurs‘ the boundaries between the ‚inside‘ and ‚outside‘ of companies. This makes companies more transparent. An organization’s messages to labor or customer markets must therefore be consistent with the culture lived within the company. This is why communication, advertising and sales will increasingly merge. With every outward-facing campaign, you could therefore first ask: ‚Is this really us? This is about “walking the talk”, story doing is more important than story telling!
3. Communication is becoming hybrid. Employees are becoming important multipliers and ’sounding boards‘ for external campaigns due to their increasing networking in social media. Every external campaign should be complemented by internal communication. Change management and external communication will become hybrids.
4. Thinking in communities. Big data algorithms form communities and target groups based on shared interests, needs, fears, emotional states, attitudes and identities. Good change management ‚clusters‘ and also works with internal groups that do not necessarily run along organizational boundaries or functions.
5. Intensify dynamics and responsiveness: Fluid campaigns are highly reactive. Change management must also become more dynamic and faster. Permanent interaction with internal communities is required. This requires a departure from classic ‚roll-out‘ programs and rigid communication plans. The change architecture in its project approach must adapt accordingly.
6. Promote empathy. Internal communication has a decisive advantage over external, virtual communication: it is largely direct and personal. In the non-digital world, exploring needs and feelings is called empathy. In an increasingly complex, global organization, managers often have to learn this again. Change management can offer consulting formats that systematically develop empathy for target groups and communities. Empathy starts in the management team: good, well-thought-out change projects start with closed meetings, retreats and quality time in which management really has undisturbed time to develop a consistent, credible image.
7. Create social spaces. In addition to virtual spaces, change management can also create social spaces. Truly leading a team or an organization into a ‚flow‘ requires more than social media campaigns. The HR organization is also called upon in a special way to develop employment and framework conditions that are consistent with the change approaches.
8. Enable participation. Change is threatening at first. Unlike a click on the ‚buy‘ button, change measures often directly affect a variety of needs for recognition, self-development, status and security. At the same time, modern employees (or freelancers or consultants) are active in increasingly transparent labor markets – loyalty is decreasing due to a lack of alternatives. Employees are more informed, more mature. The credo of the organisational developers of the 1970s, ‚turning those affected into participants‘, takes on a whole new dimension in digitalization: being actively involved in shaping change, rather than being a victim of behavioural change, is the key to avoiding uncertainty in a working world that is becoming ever faster due to digitalization.

Real beauty comes from within.

Change managers must be familiar with the tools and methods of fluid, IT-supported media campaigns. And they must be able to connect to them. But IT will not do a large part of the work for them – as it does for advertisers. Change is initially manual, mental and, above all, heart work. It starts with working with the organization’s management team. The fish must smell from the head! This is where classic workshop work is required. Inconsistencies, contradictions and conflicts must be uncovered and eliminated. Like an osteopath or physiotherapist who uses a great deal of feeling and experience to identify causes and cause-and-effect relationships that are not visible at first glance. The change manager must lead the organization to self-reflection and develop empathy for a wide range of change stakeholders. Digital formats can help with this. However, change begins in an entirely ‚analog‘ way – with personal interaction and, above all, with a completely different approach: change turns people into subjects – not objects – of change! And this is what creates the necessary openness and (self-)awareness for fluid campaign management to the outside world.