Management for Professionals

Joachim Klewes
Dirk Popp
Manuela Rost-Hein Editors

Out-thinking
Organizational
Communications
The Impact of Digital Transformation
Management for Professionals
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10101
Joachim Klewes • Dirk Popp •
Manuela Rost-Hein
Editors

Out-thinking
Organizational
Communications
The Impact of Digital Transformation
Editors
Joachim Klewes Dirk Popp
Ketchum Pleon GmbH Berlin, Germany
Berlin, Germany

Manuela Rost-Hein
Ketchum Pleon GmbH
Berlin, Germany

ISSN 2192-8096 ISSN 2192-810X (electronic)

Management for Professionals
ISBN 978-3-319-41844-5 ISBN 978-3-319-41845-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41845-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016950718

# Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017

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Contents

Digital Transformation and the Challenges for Organizational

Communications: An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Joachim Klewes, Dirk Popp, and Manuela Rost-Hein
Digital Transformation and Communications: How Key Trends
Will Transform the Way Companies Communicate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Joachim Klewes, Dirk Popp, and Manuela Rost-Hein
Why we Might Wish to Be Governed by Algorithms:
Insights into a Technophile Digital Mindset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Christopher Peterka
Policy and Politics in the Era of the Industrial Internet:
How the Digital Transformation Will Change the Political Arena . . . . . 49
Giuseppe Porcaro
The Changing Role of the Chief Marketing Officer:
Unlocking the Power of Data-Driven Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Marilies Rumpold-Preining
The Role of Corporate Communication in the Digital Age:
An Era of Change for the Communication Profession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Grazia Murtarelli
It’s About Trust: The IT Department’s Role in a Digital Organisation:
Why Techies May Be the New Communications Team . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Wayne Pales
Digital Transformation of Energy Companies: The Role
of Disruptive Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Christian Ammer
New Challenges of the Digital Transformation:
The Comeback of the Vision-Mission System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Guido Wolf

v
vi Contents

Mention Communication—Think Organisation: Agile Communication

in the Digital Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Eric-Jan Kaak
From Customer Service to Customer Experience: The Drivers, Risks
and Opportunities of Digital Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Lumir Boureanu
Car Sales in the Throes of Change: Aims for Total Customer
Experience in the Digital Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Jochen Sengpiehl
The Global Web in Regional Politics: The Regulatory and Political
Debate on Digitalisation and the Internet of Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Stefan Denig
Managing the Digital Transformation: Ten Guidelines
for Communications Professionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Joachim Klewes, Dirk Popp, and Manuela Rost-Hein

About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Digital Transformation and the Challenges
for Organizational Communications: An
Introduction

Joachim Klewes, Dirk Popp, and Manuela Rost-Hein

Communications professionals, especially those with an Anglo-American orienta-

tion, are often seen as pioneers in identifying trends in business and society and
putting them to use for their organizations. Be it the first corporate websites in the
early 1990s or, ten years later, the precursors of social media, corporate
communicators were among the first to use the new technologies and to set an
example at companies as early adopters.
This claim can no longer be made so unequivocally for the facets of the digital
transformation that are dealt with in this anthology. When it comes to Industry 4.0,
the Industrial Internet and, in the wider sense of term, the Internet of Things (IoT) as
an important manifestation of the digital transformation, voices from technology,
business development and strategy teams have so far been heard louder and more
clearly. Professional communicators are still so involved in understanding the
repercussions of technological developments on the core of their profession (the
most effective dialogue possible with different target groups) and on implementing
them in times of dwindling communication resources that dealing with the issues
raised in this edited book has been somewhat on the selective side.
We, however, are convinced that developments ranging from the smart factory
and the revolution in business models, from technological disruption across the
bandwidth of the Internet of Things to artificial intelligence, will be of such
fundamental relevance for the development of professional communication (from
both the corporate and the market perspective) that addressing them systematically
is worthwhile and, indeed, overdue.

J. Klewes (*) • M. Rost-Hein

Ketchum Pleon Germany, Berlin, Germany
e-mail: Joachim.Klewes@ketchumpleon.com; joachim.klewes@change-centre.org; Manuela.
Rost-Hein@ketchumpleon.com
D. Popp
Berlin, Germany
e-mail: Dirk@DirkPopp.com

# Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 1

J. Klewes et al. (eds.), Out-thinking Organizational Communications, Management
for Professionals, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41845-2_1
2 J. Klewes et al.

In this anthology, we make a first attempt to do so, knowing of course that we are
presenting more of an extract and a preliminary result than a clear picture. We asked
authors from different companies, different countries, from research and practice to
take a look from their individual perspective at a subject defined solely in outline.
That is why this collection of essays does not particularly follow a predefined
editorial concept. It took shape more in dialogue with the authors and would look
different in half a year’s time. May our readers see it as a starting point for making
their way through the still largely uncharted jungle of new developments in the
digital revolution.
The authors represented in this anthology are key representatives of their
respective disciplines. What they share, in addition to their proximity to
communications, is a critical attitude towards the challenges and fundamental
upheavals that the digital transformation is bringing about in a wide range of
value chains and the day-to-day working world of countless professionals. It is all
the more important to stress at this point that the collection of essays reflect this
creative disruption as an opportunity and present the challenges for the discipline in
question as exemplary.
The series of essays begins with a fundamental contribution by the editors. We
identify several fundamental challenges with which, in the context of digital
transformation, professional communication for companies and organizations
must cope. Building on a clarification of the IoT, the Industrial Internet and other
key concepts, we describe the role of corporate communications in the three
industrial epochs that preceded today’s emergence of Industry 4.0. Four trend
“worlds” of the current digital transformation phase constitute the core of our
contribution. They are technology, business, organization and society—each with
three specific trends. Each of these twelve trends is investigated for its relevance for
communication and communicators before, at the end of their chapter, we tackle the
question of whether “communication as a profession” might disappear as a conse-
quence of the digital transformation.
Taking as his example the Generation Y of digital natives whose youth in and
around the millennium already bore the hallmark of the Internet, Christopher
Peterka shows how the digitalisation processes that lie ahead will change our
day-to-day lives and our thinking. The essay’s title “Why we Might Wish to Be
Governed by Algorithms” hits the nail on the head when Peterka argues that the
changes Big Data and digitalisation bring about should be seen more as an oppor-
tunity than as a dystopia. Instead of a hesitant adaptation Peterka shows how
machines and algorithms successively improve handling information as the basis
for a problem solution. Communications professionals and managers could as early
adopters of these processes play a leading role in the digital age by virtue of being
able to teach individuals and enterprises how to handle digitalisation processes.
Giuseppe Porcaro then looks at the narratives with which the protagonists of
Industry 4.0 accompany its development. They emphasise, unsurprisingly, the
positive effects for all stakeholders, culminating in the concept of the outcome
economy, a business model that might be conceivable but would be anything but
promising without digital technologies. What is sold is the final effect of a technol-
ogy: not the car but the mobility, not the plant protection product but the higher
Digital Transformation and the Challenges for Organizational Communications:. . . 3

wheat yield per hectare. The outcome economy corresponds to a certain style of
politics: evidence-based policymaking that with increasing technological progress
will develop into algorithm-based policymaking in which outcome providers offer
data-based solutions on behalf of politics. Think for example of health-promoting
effects in the prevention sector. Porcaro uses a number of creatively chosen
examples to show the consequences that these developments could have for politi-
cal communication, such as if data acquired via sensors in, say, the traffic sector,
were to be used in real time in political campaigns.
The fact that customers’ roles are set to undergo enormous changes in the course
of the digital revolution is taken up at different points in this book. Marilies
Rumpold-Preining considers in her chapter the resulting new challenges that
CMOs will face. She focuses on the fast-changing expectations of customers and
their growing importance as co-shapers of innovations, both of which are based on
technologically facilitated access opportunities. That is why she refers to the need
to gain a better understanding of customer expectations and feedback by means of
new forms of data capture and processing. That means to rethink everything
through the lens of customer experience while infusing digital DNA into the team
and using data-driven decision-making to deliver customer experiences that are
personalized, relevant and timely.
While Marilies Rumpold-Preining sets her sights mainly on the marketing
dimension of communication, Grazia Murtarelli has corporate communications
more in mind. In a systematic way, she defines its role in the digital age. In the
core of her chapter, she stresses that the benefits of the Industrial Internet and the
digital transformation can only come into their corporate own if barriers between
departments are dismantled and they can collaborate as freely as possible. The
consequence is that demands on employees will increase at all levels, requiring
them to deal skilfully with the new tidal waves of information and manage them.
Murtarelli describes in detail four challenges that the experts must face. The
transformation of information under the influence of Big Data, she argues, will
confront experts of all kinds with the fundamental challenge to create value from
data-based applications, leading for communicators and related lines of business to
the challenge to distil “compelling stories” from the available data in accordance
with customers’ preferences. That in turn will lead to the fundamental question of
whether the available data can be evaluated efficiently and what role algorithms
will have to play in the process. Under the headings Internet of Things and the
algorithm economy, Murtarelli defines as the final challenge nothing less than the
(total) repositioning of communicators in terms of the role that communicators
might play in handling Big Data and what would then change in the profession’s
requirements profile.
In his chapter, Wayne Pales notes that trust will gain in importance as a central
concept in the age of digitalisation. The reason he cites is the enormous importance
of data integrity and data protection at many companies. Taking power utilities as
his example, he works out in detail how, with increasingly local processing of data,
the role of the IT department will increasingly change. Trust management might
even as a result of the digital transformation be transferred from corporate
4 J. Klewes et al.

communications, which has hitherto been responsible for it, to the IT team—at least
as far as the IT department’s communication with its stakeholders is concerned (and
who, in a digital world, is not one of them?). To ensure effective communication
between all players, Pales argues, a “shared culture of trust” must be established.
Christian Ammer offers a reflected perspective on the consequences of Industry
4.0 and the Internet of Things for the energy sector, emphasising major effects with
regard to a new level of cooperation, organizational structures and business areas
with customers and markets. These changes, accompanied and fostered by new
digital channels of communication and information such as the Internet, social
media and thereby access to up-to-date information, require fundamental changes
in communication between companies and prosumers. Ammer even employs the
term a “Copernican revolution in terms of communication” to illustrate the strength
of the continuing challenge in respect of digitalisation, technical solutions and
changing customer roles and behaviour.
Wayne Pales’ and Christian Ammer’s chapters having shed light on the impor-
tance of internal communication for the success of the digital transformation in
organizations, Guido Wolf goes into even greater depth in his essay. He investigates
the development of vision-mission systems that are open for the future and, as a
central area of corporate communications, are directly affected by the digital
transformation. His focus is not on the external publicity effect of statements on
corporate visions, missions or values. He concentrates on the role that employees
play in developing vision-mission systems and thereby deals with key challenges
and opportunities for internal communication and change communication at
companies in the age of digital transformation. Wolf refers, for example, to the
risks that could result from a lack of personal identification and a low level of
personal participation in drawing up systems of this kind.
Wolf does not ignore the fact that in view of the changes technological develop-
ment has brought about companies must in many respects act faster and more
flexibly than ever before. Vision-mission systems must reflect this factor and
become more adaptable. The “liquid structures” encountered increasingly often in
companies may assist with an appropriate response to changes. They will also
generate an increased orientation and identification requirement among employees.
The chapter deals graphically with how such an efficient vision-mission system can
be realised.
Eric-Jan Kaak likewise underlines the urgent need for a change in organizational
structure. He identifies a huge gap between new technological communication tools
that are, however, embedded in old-fashioned communicational and organizational
styles. Regarding their organization of processes as well as structure, Kaak sees
many companies at the level in their early days at the beginning or middle of the
twentieth century. This has to change fundamentally: inspired by small, agile
organizations, Kaak develops insights that may be valid for many organizational
structures. His ten principles of flexible and future-oriented organization reflect the
consequences and challenges for organizations and their communications
departments if they are to integrate and grow with the challenges of digital
transformation. For him agile communication must establish the technical
Digital Transformation and the Challenges for Organizational Communications:. . . 5

preconditions, the content, the spirit and the awareness for this turnaround. This
will include providing fresh impetus, motivating employees, taking the
“democratisation” of the company forward and moderating the transformation in
the role of a facilitator.
Lumir Boureanu embarks on a tour de force on the subject of digitalisation.
Using the customer experience as a practical example, he illustrates how commu-
nication processes and value chains are changing within companies under the
influence of digitalisation. Due to more and more touch points between customers
and producers, the evaluation of customer relationship data assumes an elementary
importance in corporate use of digitalisation processes. For Boureanu, the technical
component is less important for the successful transformation of a company than
the ability to use the plentiful data sources to optimise the customer relationship, a
process in which communication is a key factor.
Jochen Sengpiehl deals with a similar question focused on marketing. He
discusses current communication challenges in the automotive industry. With
software companies entering the automotive industry sector as well as in the light
of changing customer behaviour, organizational communication faces tremendous
changes. In his view, these changes in data availability and consumer behaviour
have not yet been fully registered and reacted to by the automotive industry. Hence,
success in digital transformation is inextricably connected to a deeper understand-
ing of data usage and orientation towards user experience. In this context,
Sengpiehl’s forecast underlines a change towards “owned” content and media,
implying the increased meaning of company-produced content used for new com-
munication strategies.
Stefan Denig is the last in the series of authors. In his chapter, he deals in detail
with how Industry 4.0 and progressive digitalisation in general can be tackled from
a regulatory perspective. He strikes a fine balance between presenting the benefits
of digitalisation for companies and society and describing the challenges of, say,
adequate policymaking. Denig first describes the historical development of the
Internet’s strongly state-influenced early phase into a highly market-oriented indus-
try, focusing especially on the charged relationship between German
“Ordnungspolitik” and the American free market ethos. He then provides an
overview of important regulatory initiatives in Europe and compares them with
US approaches. He names public affairs strategies and trends that are used in
interaction with lawmakers in the digital age and underscores the need to bring
together public affairs, the digital transformation and politics.
At the end of our anthology, we as editors summarise our experiences and
insights and formulate ten specific guidelines for communicators that could make
success in the context of digital transformation easier. They are understood as an
invitation to contradict them and Joachim Klewes welcomes criticism, approval or
comments on his own behalf and that of the other two editors at joachim.
klewes@ketchumpleon.com.
Our anthology would certainly not have come about without the inspiring points
made by many smart Ketchum colleagues in Germany and many other countries
and by our partners in other Omnicom agencies. We are grateful to them and also to
6 J. Klewes et al.

the fact that in spite of our “clients first” maxim, it has been possible to deal with
issues that may affect many of our clients now but on mainstream communications
projects as yet exert only a more indirect influence. It is all the more important to
make digital transformation a central topic within the agency.
We are especially grateful to Isabelle Bethe and Bendix H€ugelmann, who not
only took on the project management for our book. Always reliable and with good
ideas and commitment. It was they who made the project possible. Most impor-
tantly of all, we once more want to thank our partners and families. They made the
most important contribution, one that even in the age of digital transformation
cannot be compressed or replaced: time—and encouragement to devote a good part
of it to our exciting subject.
Digital Transformation
and Communications: How Key Trends Will
Transform the Way Companies
Communicate

Joachim Klewes, Dirk Popp, and Manuela Rost-Hein

Abstract
The authors address in this chapter fundamental challenges with which, in the
context of digital transformation, professional communication for companies
and organizations must cope. Building on a clarification of the IoT, the Industrial
Internet and other key concepts, they identify the role of corporate
communications in the three industrial epochs that preceded today’s emergence
of Industry 4.0. On this basis, they identify four trend “worlds” for the current
digital transformation phase. They are technology, business, organization and
society—each with three specific trends. Each of these 12 trends is investigated
for its relevance for communication and communicators before, at the end of
their chapter, the authors tackle the question of whether “communication as a
profession” might disappear as a consequence of the digital transformation.

Introduction: Exploring the Role of Communications

When, in the early 1990s, we first experimented with digital customer projects at
our agency, they involved multimedia applications and, before long, the precursors
of websites and online portals.
We were unaware that the explosion of the Internet was going to revolutionise
even more than our professional and private communication. Neither we, as
consultants, nor our clients had the slightest idea that people would be able to
communicate with one another wirelessly via the Internet in real time, around the

J. Klewes (*) • M. Rost-Hein

Ketchum Pleon Germany, Berlin, Germany
e-mail: Joachim.Klewes@ketchumpleon.com; Manuela.Rost-Hein@ketchumpleon.com
D. Popp
Berlin, Germany
e-mail: Dirk@DirkPopp.com

# Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 7

J. Klewes et al. (eds.), Out-thinking Organizational Communications, Management
for Professionals, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41845-2_2
8 J. Klewes et al.

clock and nearly everywhere in the world or, indeed, that machines would be
connected with machines across continents via the Internet and be able to control
complex production and logistics processes autonomously.
Today, all of this is a reality and one that is set to develop further at enormous
speed. Data volumes on the Internet of Things (IoT) are expected to be increasing
twice as fast as in social networks. Leading technology fairs like the CES in Las
Vegas, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona or CeBIT in Hannover indicate
where we are heading. While traditional industries, with manufacturing at the
forefront, are working to digitise entire factories, technology companies like
IBM, Google or Microsoft are developing learning, cognitive IT systems that as a
variant of artificial intelligence are intended to make machines, plants and other
digital interaction systems smart, as it were, and to make robots ready for use in the
daily lives of millions of people.
Corporate communications has neither been nor is the driver of this develop-
ment. That has tended to be the role of its marketing-oriented variant, which mainly
targets consumers or other customer groups, and is perhaps less so but is nonethe-
less that of corporate communications with its stakeholder alignment ranging from
politics or NGOs via the financial market to neighbourhoods and, naturally, its own
employees. But there are many points of contact between the current digital
transformation and professional corporate communications such as is to be found
at companies, non-profit organizations and society as a whole.
For one, the digital transformation with, as its central dimensions, the Internet of
Things and its production-related version the Industrial Internet, or what we in
Europe call Industry 4.0, affects the development of corporate communications.
Corporate communications will change markedly as a result of the digital revolu-
tion regardless whether we look at the activities of the teams in companies them-
selves or at the agencies and service providers that work for them.
On the other hand, the digital transformation will only succeed with the aid of
modern, professional corporate communications. Indeed, it depends in many
respects on the efficiency of corporate communication.
We will deal with both of these perspectives in this introduction to our book on
the transformation of corporate communication.

Communications: A Neglected Perspective in Discussions

on the Digital Transformation

There can be no doubt that the development of the digital transformation plays an
important role in discussions at international think tanks and in national and
international publications. Focal points in this debate include its significance for
value creation and innovation, for global interconnection and, at times, the societal
risks that it poses. From a communications perspective, Industry 4.0, the Internet of
Things and digital transformation in general are as good as never dealt with in
greater detail. The role of professional (corporate) communications is not a widely
discussed topic among experts with regard either to societal acceptance of the IoT