How to build an internal culture campaign staff actually care about

Most internal culture campaigns fail before they start. Not because the message is wrong, but because the format is. A values email, a break room poster, a slide deck in the all-hands meeting: staff read it, click away and forget it within the hour.

The reason is straightforward. Internal communications get treated as a broadcast. You tell employees something about the culture instead of giving them a real role in it. And people without a role tune out.

At Livewall, we design internal campaigns and employee experience programmes built on participation, not information transfer. What works and what doesn't, we've learned working with organisations like Efteling, Kruidvat, Trekpleister and McDonald's across retail, entertainment, and services.

Why most internal campaigns don't land

The failure starts with a wrong assumption: that employees respond to the same formats as consumers. They don't. An employee is already inside the organisation. They know the gap between what communications say and what they live every day.

When that gap is wide, the campaign loses credibility immediately. If the message is "we are one team" but nobody asked anyone for input, the campaign feels hollow. Staff see through it.

What actually works:

• Participation over presentation. Give employees something to do, not just something to read. A vote, a contribution, a choice. Even a small action increases genuine involvement.
• Recognition over aspiration. Show what is real in the organisation, not a polished version. Genuine colleague stories outperform campaign photography every time.
• Repetition through channels staff already use. One launch moment achieves nothing lasting. Plan multiple touchpoints through channels where employees already spend time: their phone, their work app, their team huddle.
• Employees as co-senders. The strongest internal messages come not from HR or communications, but from colleagues. Build mechanics that make that happen naturally.

Borrow from how you engage consumers

The most effective internal campaigns borrow principles from consumer engagement. Gamification, narrative formats, personalisation, challenges with a clear endpoint. Techniques that work for customers work internally too, as long as the content is authentic.

We've seen this pattern consistently. For Trekpleister Preboarding we built a preboarding journey that actively involved new hires before their first day. Not a dry information transfer, but a personal, interactive experience that made them curious about their new role. Employees arrived on day one already connected and motivated.

The same principle applies to culture campaigns. If you want people to genuinely participate, the campaign needs to offer something worth responding to.

The four building blocks of a culture campaign that works

1. Start with behaviour, not message

Most culture campaigns begin with "what do we want to say?". Better campaigns begin with "what do we want people to do?". Define the desired behaviour specifically. Do you want employees to give feedback more often? Do you want them to recognise the values in everyday situations? Translate that into an experience that prompts that behaviour.

2. Make it personal and contextually relevant

One message for all employees rarely lands. A logistics worker in a distribution centre has a different daily reality than an office employee in London. The campaign needs to feel like it was made for them. That can come from personalised content, team-specific formats, or stories that are recognisable to particular groups.

3. Build in social proof

People trust colleagues more than they trust HR communications. Build space in your campaign for employee stories, quotes, reactions or contributions. That raises credibility and lowers resistance.

4. Plan for continuity, not a launch

A culture campaign that makes a big splash once and then stops changes nothing. Culture is built through repetition. Plan a structure spanning several months, with varied formats and touchpoints. Small, frequent activations work better than one large event.

Treat internal communications as a product

The step most organisations miss is treating internal communications as a product to be designed, not content to be published. That means: gathering user insight from employees, testing formats, iterating based on response.

At Livewall, we build internal communications experiences that actively involve employees. That might be an interactive challenge built around new company values, a digital contribution wall where employees share their own perspective, or a team-based format that connects groups across the organisation.

The technology is not the hard part. The hard part is having the confidence to actually ask employees something, rather than just telling them.

Measure what matters

Most internal campaigns are measured on reach: how many people opened the email, how many attended the kick-off. That is the wrong number.

What counts is behaviour change. Are employees acting differently? Do they recognise the values in everyday decisions? Do new starters feel settled faster?

Define those KPIs upfront. Build them into the campaign design. That way you can also learn from what doesn't work and adjust before the budget runs out.

An employer brand campaign that lands well internally also has external impact. Employees talk about their employer. Not because they have to, but because they want to. That is the signal that the campaign worked.