(Originally presented at From Day One January 2026 Conference)
Marketing is misunderstood.
When people think of Marketing they’re usually picturing advertising. But those are simply outcomes. Rather, marketing is a way of seeing the world. A mindset. A belief. It’s a thing that everyone can carry with them.
Central to this mindset is one word: customer. Marketing is the orientation of everything you do around your customer, or, in other words, your audience.
If there’s someone else you’re trying to convince about anything — that’s a customer. And if you’re trying to convince someone of something — you’re a marketer.
Your employees are not resources. They’re customers. They are the first customer for everything that you are doing. If they don’t buy into something, no one else on the outside is going to, either.
One of the challenges for leaders is that we introduce new technologies, processes, and platforms without actually thinking about the people who will adopt them. We do it without thinking about the customer.
And before you leap to thinking, “Well, but employees are getting paid,” we’ll tell you that a paycheck does not win compliance. It doesn’t mean anyone cares. Data shows that nearly two-thirds of employees don’t care much about where they work. Emotional engagement and going the extra mile has to be earned.
We’ve all experienced it: Imagine you’re a customer of a new airline. They’ve spent billions of dollars making sure you know who they are, how to use their system, that they’re going where you want to go at the price you want to pay. Everything in your experience with them looking up flights, booking tickets, checking bags . . . the whole experience is flawless , until you get to the gate and the attendant there is in a foul mood (because they’re overworked, underpaid, and overlooked), thereby ruining your experience.
Customer service is the biggest driver of sustainable brand success. You win me over by what you say, but the human interactions where your brand is felt will be the make or break moment. The lack of a good experience there is costing billions in wasted investments and productivity.
Which is all connected back to how people feel about where they work.
If you get that element right, your people will save you in measurable ways. Not just in productivity and revenue but in wellness, safety, retention — everything. It’s the place you invest to reap rewards.
We have to see the change that we are bringing is not our story. Rather, it belongs to our customers — the employees.
Transformation fails when there’s an engagement gap between leaders and the front-line. Because the interpretation is that change is happening “to” them rather “with” them. Adoption suffers.
If there isn’t a reason from the company that your people can believe in, the one that prevails and creates the culture will be the one that’s coming from the people.
But it’s possible to change this with an intentional, consistent, emotive story.
How to do this?
That’s where the principles and process of Change Marketing™ come in.
Change Marketing™ is an innovative, people-first process to build, launch, and sustain change, and it involves three principles: Insight, Story, and Craft.
If we want to orient everything around our audience, we have to listen to them.
Change is a constant, but it’s never been as constant as it is today. There is massive disruption in our offices, and it’s not something that we as humans respond to well. When we’re consuming constant change, it’s difficult to keep track, so earning the attention of your people now is even more challenging. Most of us are too busy to care — there’s limited parking space in our minds to do so. If we start by listening, we can figure out what they care about.
Once you understand what your employees actually care about, identify and tell a story that is real and can be felt. Not something that is overpromised and underdelivered with words, but is based in something everyone can actually see and trust. Oftentimes, it’s the employees themselves that can tell the most authentic story about your brand, your vision, your transformation. Remember, people don’t follow brands, they follow other people.
Employees are sophisticated consumers, bombarded with messages every day. Engage them by earning their attention with content and experiences that are in stride with their busy lives. Create training, support, and content that they actually want to spend time with. Give your communications the same care and attention you give your consumer-facing advertisements.
For example, say, you’re a department leader who learns that only 44% of managers have been properly trained to manage*. Most of them have been promoted into leadership positions because they’re simply good at what they do, not because they know how to succeed in this new role. And when they step into this role, there are few clear expectations or training to support performance. As a result, your metric tracking how supported these people leaders are feeling is very low.
It just so happens, this was the case for one of our Fortune 100 clients. To turn things around, we interviewed everyone - leaders and people - and listened to their answers to questions such as, “What makes you feel supported,” and “How do you want to show up?”
From there, we identified a story that reframed leadership into five clear behaviors based on this input, and were able to show real employee stories behind them. It was brought to everyone through an immersive people leader summit, hands-on workshops, and external speakers.
How did we know it worked? A 12% rise in the leadership report index over 3% org-wide.
If you’re interested in creating a change story yourself, here are some of the questions you can ask as part of your StoryMap process.
Here’s an example of creating an AI adoption story using this concept:
There are two things people complain about more than anything: The way things are, and change.
This tells us that we are not rational beings to be managed. We are emotional, creative, compassionate creatures. So we need something that we can believe in emotionally in order to open ears, minds, and hearts to what needs to be adopted.
Instruction without inspiration misses the “on” switch. If you’re interested in turning on your customers with our principles, let’s talk.
