I have sat in rooms where months of effort go into designing a solid capability program – intelligent structure, relevant content, experienced facilitators—and then watched it quietly collapse after being launched with a three-line email and a bland calendar invite. No build-up, no narrative, no emotional ownership. Just… “Module 1 is now live.”
It reminded me of movies that go straight to OTT platforms without a trailer, poster, or any buzz—technically released, but culturally invisible. And then we wonder why learners don’t show up with curiosity, why the post-program impact is so hard to measure, and why people forget 90% of what they just “learned.”
At some point, I stopped asking how we could “roll out” capability building more effectively—and started wondering, what if we launched it like a brand campaign?
What I Observed – and Changed
A few quarters ago, I was shadowing a mid-level leadership intervention at a large consumer goods company. It had everything you would expect in a flagship program – clarity of purpose, well-defined competencies, good facilitation. But from the learner’s perspective? The response was underwhelming.
I heard things like: “Is this mandatory?” “Why am I part of this again?” and my personal favorite, “Another training?”
It hit me that the problem wasn’t in the content or structure – it was in how the experience was positioned.
So, I borrowed a page from the marketer’s playbook. We shifted our approach: created teaser content that sparked curiosity, enlisted internal champions to talk about their past learning stories, and framed the program as a journey with a purpose rather than just another intervention. We revealed modules gradually, much like product features in a campaign launch. Learners started showing up – mentally and emotionally. The feedback changed. The recall improved. The mental and emotional participation rates doubled.
Learning is Not Just Instruction – It’s Influence
That shift made me re-evaluate how I view capability building. I’ve come to believe that learning inside organizations isn’t just about transferring knowledge. It’s about generating momentum, building emotional recall, and shifting behavior—which is precisely what good campaigns are designed to do.
We talk a lot about “engaging learners.” But in practice, we often forget that learners today are exposed to hundreds of distractions every hour—Slack notifications, tight deadlines, dopamine-driven social feeds. The real competition isn’t other trainings. It’s everything else fighting for their attention.
So, if we want people to care, we can’t just instruct. We have to influence. And influence needs storytelling, anticipation, trust, and memorability. In other words: it needs campaign thinking.
Using AIDA to Build Capability Journeys
One model I’ve started using more actively is the AIDA marketing funnel—Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. It’s typically used to plan consumer-facing campaigns, but when applied to learning, it transforms how we think about engagement:
Here are a few red flags: delete and add a table
When we begin to treat learners like internal customers, everything changes—from how we plan our comms to how we sustain post-program behavior. The entire learning experience becomes immersive and memorable—not because it was heavily resourced, but because it was strategically designed.
A team of 30 seems like quite a significant resource to focus on the digital pound,” Ian Taylor, an adviser to the trade association CryptoUK, told the Times. “It shows the impact it would have, and that the bank are serious about it.
Mitchel Krytok – Quote
The Science Behind Memory, Emotion & Engagement
If I pause and look at this from a behavioral lens, there’s a neuroscience angle worth mentioning.
Our brains are wired to remember emotion, not information. We recall moments that had a story, a trigger, a conflict, or a reward. That’s why we remember our first boss, our first big win, or our worst meeting — not necessarily the training slide from two weeks ago.
Campaigns leverage this human mechanism brilliantly. They tap into emotional branding, not just informational marketing. So when we apply the same psychology to capability building, we create what I would call “learning with muscle memory.”
If the kickoff mail is bland, you’ve lost the learner before the first module. But if the entry point feels exciting, aspirational, or even slightly mysterious — curiosity does the rest.
That’s where campaignization wins — by triggering emotional memory, not just mental storage.
Marketing Muscle Inside L&D
Here’s where things get practical. When I say “treat learning like a campaign,” I don’t mean you need to throw huge budgets at it. It’s not about gloss. It’s about intentional narrative design.
Some tools and approaches I’ve found powerful:
Marketers know this instinctively. L&D teams are just beginning to tap into this muscle.
The Blue Ocean Inside Learning
Here’s where my Blue Ocean hat comes in. Most learning interventions operate in a Red Ocean—they compete for attention, rely on mandatory attendance, and track success through completion rates. But when you apply campaign thinking, you unlock a Blue Ocean: you stop competing for participation, and start creating pull through emotional connection.
At Skalent INDIA, we’ve integrated this approach deeply across our offerings—be it MTa Learning, Lumina Assessments, LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, or our proprietary Leadership Development Experiences (LDEs). We don’t just ask “what should learners know?” We ask “what should learners feel and remember?”
We storyboard the learning arc. We design entry points that are engaging. We align visual identity, tone, and storytelling. The result? Capability journeys that feel more like brand experiences than corporate training sessions.
We’ve even co-created campaigns with clients where learning interventions had pre-launch teaser kits, kick-off films, gamified onboarding, and post-program learning boosters that mimicked CRM-style follow-ups. The transformation in learner mindset and program traction has been visibly exponential.
Business Impact: Why Campaign Thinking is Not Just “Nice to Have”
This isn’t just a feel-good idea. Campaignization directly affects:
When leaders experience learning that feels like a brand experience, they see the function differently. You shift from being a training provider to being a value creator.
This shift also opens up stronger cross-functional collaboration. I’ve seen L&D teams work hand-in-hand with branding, internal comms, and digital when the learning journey is positioned like a campaign. And when that happens — suddenly, you’re not just “delivering training.” You’re launching transformation.
Closing Reflection
You don’t need to throw more content at learners. You need to create a sense of anticipation and belonging—before the first slide even appears.
The real question is: would you be excited to attend your own program?
If the answer isn’t a definite yes, then maybe it’s time to stop launching learning and start campaigning it.
Because in a world where everything is competing for mindspace, the only learning that sticks is the one that moves people.
Curious how we bring campaign thinking into our learning interventions?
Let’s talk about how we can design a capability journey that learners actually want to be part of.
