Many people associate artificial intelligence with job losses, increasing workplace surveillance, and ballooning profits for tech billionaires. A recent article from the Brookings Institution (March 2026), authored by researchers from Brown University, Case Western Reserve University, and Brookings itself, argues that this trajectory is not inevitable — but only if policymakers make a different choice.
The authors diagnose a problem that predates AI: work has been getting steadily worse. More monitoring, algorithmic scheduling, shrinking autonomy, and stagnant wages have become the norm. They call this process „enshittification“ — and it started long before the current AI boom. The erosion of collective bargaining power, weakened regulatory agencies, and declining union membership are the root causes. AI accelerates this trend but did not create it. According to surveys, more than half of Americans fear that AI will take their jobs and replace their face-to-face relationships.
1. Protect and expand human care professions. Teachers, nurses, and social workers should not be replaced by AI but strengthened through better policy frameworks. Minimum staffing requirements — already standard in aviation and nuclear power — could bring more people into these professions and improve quality. AI can support care work, for example by handling documentation so nurses spend more time with patients. But the core work stays human.
2. Build institutions for lifelong learning and career transitions. Workers displaced by AI need more than a short retraining course. The authors argue for institutionalized pathways for lifelong learning, drawing on the example of European countries with strong trade unions. As a concrete case, they point to software engineers — whose jobs are under growing AI pressure — who could, with targeted support, transition into teaching, where chronic shortages already exist. For this to work, salaries, status, and professional autonomy in care and education professions must also rise.
3. Create tripartite institutions for the co-design of AI. When AI is introduced top-down, without involving those affected, it tends to worsen working conditions. The authors give a telling example: utility workers forced to follow inefficient and unsafe routes by poorly designed client management software — a system built without understanding their specific context. When workers are brought into the design process, better systems emerge for everyone. Tripartite institutions — bringing together government, employers, and trade unions — can structure and anchor this participatory process.
The Brookings article is not just relevant to labor market policy — it is a masterpiece in applied campaigning. It identifies a growing societal conflict (inequality driven by AI), defines clear target groups (workers in vulnerable professions, trade unions, policymakers), and proposes concrete, actionable measures. That is precisely what effective political campaigning requires: not just describing a problem, but articulating a vision that motivates action and „building golden bridges“ (Strategic Campaigning Principle No. 14)
The core message — people first, AI as a tool rather than a replacement — is campaign-ready: simple, emotionally grounded, and operationalized in clear policy proposals. That connection between vision and actionability is exactly the backbone of the Business Campaigning Model.
Happy Easter
Source: Sorelle Friedler, Serena Booth, Andrew Schrank, Susan Helper: „A people-first vision for the future of work in the age of AI“, Brookings Institution, March 25, 2026.
Die aktuelle Berichterstattung zur ETH-Studie über den Einfluss von Social-Media-Werbung auf Abstimmungsresultate markiert einen Wendepunkt in der Schweizer Kampagnenanalyse. Erstmals wird ein signifikanter Zusammenhang zwischen der Anzahl ausgespielter Instagram- und Facebook-Anzeigen und dem Abstimmungserfolg einer Vorlage nachgewiesen.
Im Zentrum steht die sogenannte Halbierungsinitiative (SRG-Initiative). Die Gegner schalteten rund 50 Millionen Anzeigen, die Befürworter rund 10 Millionen. Der ETH-Forscher Arthur Capozzi spricht von einer «starken Korrelation» zwischen Werbedruck und Annahmequote. Auch wenn Kausalität nicht bewiesen ist, liegt die strategische Interpretation nahe: Wer die digitale Arena kontrolliert, verschiebt die Realitätswahrnehmung.
Diese Entwicklung lässt sich unter dem Blickwinkel der 14 Strategischen Campaigning Grundsätze (14SCG) präzise analysieren.
When Bill Gates published his latest climate letter just hours before the UN issued its 1.5 °C warning, he wasn’t simply sharing thoughts — he was framing the debate. His message sounded positive, practical, almost soothing: focus on health, food, and economic progress. Who could disagree? Yet from a campaigning perspective, it’s a textbook case of agenda displacement.
While scientists raised the alarm, Gates offered reassurance. Instead of urgency, his narrative radiated calm rationality. That’s what makes it so effective — and so dangerous. It doesn’t deny the crisis; it defers it. It replaces the uncomfortable question (“How do we cut emissions fast enough?”) with a more comfortable one (“How can we live better despite them?”).
In campaigning terms, that’s a frame-shift: moving the Overton window from prevention to adaptation. And once the public adopts that mindset, policy ambition quietly erodes.
For communicators, this moment is a reminder that facts don’t fight frames — only better frames do.
If you want to defend ambitious climate action, you must reclaim the language of realism. Because “realistic” has been hijacked. Realism isn’t slowing down. Realism is using every proven solution available — including synthetic fuels, Power-to-X technologies, and innovation-driven defossilization.
The first rule of strategic campaigning: define the battlefield before anyone else does.
Gates just reminded us what happens when you don’t.
This is not about attacking individuals, but about understanding influence. Whoever controls the timing and tone of the narrative controls its impact. If we want meaningful progress, we need to out-communicate the comfort zone — and bring science-based urgency back into the public imagination.
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Campaigning, at its core, is the method of gaining more power and influence — not through manipulation or money, but through mobilization, meaning, and momentum.
The recent victory of Zohran Mamdani in New York City shows just how powerful this method can be when executed with creativity, authenticity, and strategy.
In November 2025, the 34-year-old Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani became the first Muslim and first Indo-American mayor in New York’s history.
He didn’t just defeat political heavyweights like Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa — he defied the rules of modern politics. His campaign became a case study in how to turn people, ideas, and technology into real political power.
If you want to gain attention on social media, it’s less about who you are and more about how you express yourself. A new study published in Nature Human Behaviour shows that emotional language — including the use of emojis — has a much stronger impact than neutral or purely factual communication.
The research team led by Yizhang Zhao from Tsinghua University in Beijing analyzed around 2.1 million posts and interactions on WeChat, China’s largest social media platform. More than 2,200 participants, all members of Generation Z, were included. Their online behavior was linked to detailed data on personality, education, and family background.
The results were striking: It’s not background or character that drives reach, but expressiveness.
While demographic and personal traits explained less than 10% of differences in engagement, the style and emotional diversity of expression accounted for up to 49%. Posts that conveyed a range of emotions — joy, pride, frustration, sadness, surprise, or reflection — received significantly more likes and comments.
Further experiments confirmed the effect: Those who communicate with emotional variety and use emojis deliberately tend to trigger empathy and resonance among their audience — the main drivers of attention.
But there’s a catch: The effect fades quickly. Users who lose emotional depth or change their tone soon see their engagement decline.
The researchers summarize it clearly:
“Attention online is easy to get, but hard to keep.”
For campaigners, communicators, and brands, the message is clear:
If you want to be heard, you have to be felt. Emotion isn’t a stylistic choice — it’s a strategic asset.
Source:
Zhao, Y. et al. (2025). Nature Human Behaviour, DOI 10.1038/s41562–025–02323–1
When Uncle Ben gave Peter Parker aka Spiderman this piece of advice, he wasn’t just preparing him for the life of a superhero. He was expressing one of the most important truths about leadership — a truth that seems to get lost every time someone mistakes power for permission.
In politics, we’ve seen this confusion play out over and over again. Donald Trump, Javier Milei, Vladimir Putin — each in his own way — shows what happens when power is used as a weapon rather than as a tool for service. They all claim to act “for the people,” but the result often looks more like acting on the people.
Power is a force. It amplifies whatever intention drives it. Used with integrity, it enables progress and protection; without it, it leads to destruction and division. Responsibility is the moral voltage regulator that keeps it under control. Without that regulator, even the brightest current can burn everything around it.
Sometimes I get strange looks when people ask me what I do — and I tell them that I help others, or good ideas, gain power and influence. For many, “power” sounds suspicious, as if it automatically implied manipulation or dominance. But that’s not what it means.
Power, to me, is simply the capacity to make things happen — to move people, ideas, or systems. Without it, even the most visionary concept remains stuck in theory. Campaigning is about giving that capacity to those who want to make a positive difference.
The decisive question is not whether we use power, but why. What’s the purpose behind it? Does it serve others or only ourselves? Does it create understanding or just compliance?
The EU set out to make road transport climate-neutral with a radical all-electric strategy — but failed to anticipate the consequences. Now it is forced to backtrack. Three Strategic Campaigning Principles could have helped prevent this mistake: Mindfulness and Foresight, Scenario Thinking, and Persistence and Perseverance in Strategy Implementation.
In campaigning, mindfulness means being aware of the consequences of one’s actions — not only the intended ones, but also the unintended. Foresight means seeing decisions in a broader context and anticipating their long-term implications. Once these two virtues are lost, well-intentioned strategies can easily turn against their own goals. That is precisely what happened in European transport policy.
By committing to an all-electric strategy, the EU locked itself into one single technological pathway to climate neutrality. Other viable solutions — such as renewable synthetic fuels (eFuels) — were sidelined or excluded by regulation. However, the arguments underlying the decisions were neither fact-based nor scientifically supported. Instead, the EU relied on questionable and one-sided publications disguised as studies by green think tanks, whose findings were based on unrealistic assumptions.
The consequences are now painfully visible:
Hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs are at risk.
Economic value creation is moving abroad.
Innovation and competition are being stifled.
The intentions may have been noble, but the outcome is disastrous. A strategy without mindfulness for its side effects is not strategy — it’s wishful thinking.
Es ist über zwanzig Jahre her, dass die erste Auflage von Business Campaigning erschienen ist. Damals war der Begriff in der Schweiz und im deutschsprachigen Raum kaum bekannt. Ich wollte zeigen, dass Kampagnen nicht nur in der Politik funktionieren, sondern auch in Unternehmen, NGOs oder Start-ups – überall dort, wo es darum geht, das scheinbar Unmögliche möglich zu machen.
Seitdem hat sich viel verändert. Die Welt ist komplexer geworden, die Medienlandschaft unübersichtlicher, und Organisationen stehen heute vor ganz anderen Herausforderungen. Strategische Kommunikation bedeutet heute, sich in einem Umfeld zu behaupten, das von Informationsflut, Fragmentierung und Vertrauensverlust geprägt ist. Genau deshalb war es Zeit, Business Campaigning noch einmal grundlegend zu überarbeiten.
Die dritte Auflage ist ein umfassendes Update – inhaltlich, strukturell und methodisch. Vieles habe ich ergänzt oder aktualisiert, manches neu geschrieben. Dabei sind auch Erkenntnisse eingeflossen, die ich im Rahmen des CAS Campaigning vermittelt und gemeinsam mit Studierenden weiterentwickelt habe. Zudem Erkenntnisse aus dem Campaigning Summit Switzerland – ein Ort, an dem bis zur Pandemie die besten Köpfe aus Kommunikation, Politik und Wirtschaft zusammenkamen, um voneinander zu lernen.
Denn Business Campaigning ist keine Methode, die man einfach anwendet – es ist eine Denkweise. Es geht darum, ausgehend von einer klaren Mission langfristige Wirkung zu erzielen, statt kurzfristige Reaktionen zu provozieren.
Ich wollte, dass das Buch Leserinnen und Leser dazu befähigt, ihre eigene Kampagne zu entwerfen – unabhängig davon, ob sie ein Produkt lancieren, eine politische Initiative starten oder in einem Unternehmen einen Kulturwandel anstossen wollen. Deshalb ist die neue Auflage noch praxisnäher und doch allgemeiner anwendbar, mit Beispielen, Checklisten und Modellen, die direkt in den Alltag übertragbar sind.
Seit der ersten Auflage durfte ich unzählige Kampagnen begleiten – für Unternehmen wie ABB, NGOs, Parteien und internationale Organisationen. Diese 42 Jahre Erfahrung sind in die neue Auflage eingeflossen. Sie zeigen, dass sich die Prinzipien des Campaignings überall anwenden lassen: Wo immer Menschen überzeugt, mobilisiert oder zum Handeln bewegt werden sollen.
Wir leben in einer Zeit, in der Polarisierung zunimmt, Fakten infrage gestellt werden und Vertrauen in Institutionen schwindet. Gerade deshalb brauchen wir Campaigning – im ursprünglichen, strategischen Sinn: als Kunst des Verstehens, Verbindens und Wirkens.
Gutes Campaigning bedeutet nicht, lauter zu schreien als andere, sondern den Menschen zuzuhören, sie ernst zu nehmen und sie mit glaubwürdigen Botschaften zu gewinnen. Es geht darum, Brücken zu bauen, statt Gräben zu vertiefen, und mit Haltung zu kommunizieren, statt nur mit Taktik.
Die Prinzipien des Business Campaigning können genau das leisten – weil sie auf Klarheit, Authentizität und langfristiger Wirkung beruhen. Oder, um es auf den Punkt zu bringen: Campaigning ist die strategische Antwort auf eine Welt im Dauerrauschen.
Business Campaigning richtet sich an alle, die etwas verändern wollen – sei es im eigenen Unternehmen, in der Gesellschaft oder in der Politik. Es ist ein Buch für Menschen, die Verantwortung übernehmen und Wirkung erzielen wollen.
Mir war wichtig, dass es inspiriert, ohne zu belehren. Dass es Klarheit schafft, wo sonst Buzzwords dominieren. Und dass es Mut macht, eigene Wege zu gehen – auch gegen Widerstände.
Denn Campaigning bedeutet: sich nicht mit dem Offensichtlichen zufriedenzugeben. Sondern das Ziel so lange zu verfolgen, bis es erreicht ist.
📘 Business Campaigning – Strategien und Methoden für Unternehmen, NGOs und Kampagnen
3., vollständig überarbeitete Auflage
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Humanity is facing urgent crises—from a warming planet to growing social divides and democracy threatened on a global level. While solutions do exist, the pace of campaigns often outstrips the public’s readiness.
When we push too fast, too hard, we risk alienating those who don’t yet see or understand the issue. Pressure without invitation provokes backlash: entrenched interests mobilise, skepticism spreads, and progress grinds to a halt.
We need only look at recent U.S. rollbacks of scientific research—mass layoffs at climate and environmental agencies have weakened collection and analysis of the very data we rely on to track our impact on our planet—to see how rapid reversals can stall or even reverse long-term momentum.
Pointing out problems isn’t enough. Every time we diagnose a crisis, we must pair it with a clear, achievable path forward, solutions and public acceptance: policy reforms, community projects, lifestyle shifts, the costs of new technologies and educational programs have to be acceptable by majorities. (This corresponds to my Strategic Campaigning Principles No. 7, 9 and 13). Showing people what they can do remedies paralysis, builds confidence, increases acceptance and lays stepping stones toward real impact.
But it has to be acceptable to them without manipulation or unacceptable pressure.
True, lasting change moves in step with society’s own rhythm, understanding and emotions. By matching our campaigns to collective readiness—through listening, storytelling, and step-by-step engagement—we can forge the broad coalition necessary to carry progress forward, instead of watching it stall.
Join our Campaigning for Solutions, drop an email to Mr. Campaigning if you want to be a part of it.
Am 18. Mai 2025 stimmten die Zürcher Stimmberechtigten über den zweiten Schritt der Steuervorlage 17 ab, der eine Senkung des Gewinnsteuersatzes von 7 % auf 6 % vorsah. Das Ergebnis fiel eindeutig aus: 54,5 % lehnten die Vorlage ab, nur 45,5 % stimmten dafür. Bei einer Stimmbeteiligung von 35,3 % votierten 179 439 Personen gegen und 149 962 dafür .
Schon im Abstimmungskampf setzten SP, Grüne und AL konsequent auf die negative Deutung der Vorlage – sie sprachen von einem «Affront gegenüber der Bevölkerung» und einem «Steuergeschenk für einige wenige» .
Über die Gründe der Ablehnung wird viel spekuliert. Die SVP schiebt die Schuld auf die Wirtschaftsverbände, weil diese mit ihren Botschaften die Angst vor Zuwanderung geschürt haben sollen. Das ist natürlich reiner Humbug und dient lediglich dem eigenen Machterhalt. Mit ihrem Plakat „Zürcher Untergang“ verhindern hat sie der Vorlage den grössten Bärendienst erwiesen. Negativer geht’s kaum. Wie soll man da ein Ja erwarten?
Was also sind die Gründe für die gescheiterte Kampagne, was lief schief?