Jul 20, 2010
General Electric has launched a private online community for its global network of 5,000 marketers. An intramural social networking platform called MarkNet, the program is designed to connect marketers from different GE divisions who normally wouldn't speak to each other because they belong to different marketing silos.
Jul 9, 2010
Can a warm and fuzzy, people-focused advertising campaign help restore the reputation of the bruised financial unit of General Electric?
G.E. will start to find that out as it rolls out ads for its GE Capital unit, which was battered by the financial crisis because of its exposure in areas like commercial real estate and consumer credit card debt.
Jun 28, 2010
GE has a whole lot faith in its ecomagination initiative. So much faith, in fact, that the company is pumping $10 billion into the project's R&D over the next 5 years--effectively doubling its investment from the past 5 years. The reason is simple: ecomagination is a cash cow, generating $70 billion in revenue since its inception in 2005. With the world's attention turned toward clean technology, that number will almost certainly grow.
Jun 10, 2010
At last week's national Business Marketing Association (BMA) conference in Chicago, three marketing executives from three well-known B2B brands each made an interesting comment: "In the 3M scheme of things, marketing wasn't even a second-tier priority. It was fourth or fifth tier at best. But in the future, marketing needs to lead 3M." -- Jeff Lavers, Vice President of Marketing, Sales and Communications, 3M.
"Emerson didn't even have a CMO before me. They didn't believe they needed one."-- Kathy Button Bell, CMO, Emerson.
"We're announcing a marriage at GE. We're not sure how they'll get along, but IT and marketing are about to become married. We're combining the two functions." -- Beth Comstock, CMO, GE.
Wow! Three iconic B2B brands, each rethinking the role of marketing within their organizations. Is this a wave?
Brian Morrissey
Jun 1, 2010
Judy Hu, GE's global director of advertising and branding, on stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference last week, discussed a new effort by GE to crowdsource ideas for how to "avoid the lame and embrace the awesome" in digital media. Over the next four days, GE collected 60 suggestions, ranging from ideas for ad campaigns to product concepts.
The effort is the latest example of a worldwide brand testing the crowdsourcing waters. The move has put the spotlight back on the ongoing debate about the value of such efforts -- including to creators.
Jun 1, 2010
Frances Gerety, a copywriter for the now-defunct agency, coined "A Diamond is Forever" in 1948 for Johannesburg, South Africa, diamond company DeBeers.
That memorable tagline and 24 others were among the best-ever advertising taglines as rated by a group of 10 CMOs and advertising experts.
Ron Ashkenas
Apr 29, 2010
Reputation is a "soft" concept that most managers and employees don't feel is their job to manage. Instead they view it as the role of senior executives, or of functions like corporate communications, marketing, advertising, or public relations. While this is certainly true to some extent, it may also be a cop out. For example, two firms that are consistently at or near the top of the "most reputable" companies list (based on extensive consumer surveys by the non-profit Reputation Institute) are Johnson & Johnson and The Walt Disney Company. Despite having many types of businesses, J&J emphasizes through its "credo" that every employee has a responsibility to put the well-being of the people they serve first. Similarly, Disney makes every employee feel responsible for the entertainment products and services they provide. So maybe their positions on the top of the reputation list are no accidents.
Bob Liodice
Apr 20, 2010
The following 10 companies stand out as prime examples of how social responsibility can be productively coupled with sound strategies to advance goodwill, while building sustainable and impressive businesses. They provide the leadership to demonstrate how marketers can pursue both objectives simultaneously. As such, socially conscious companies have stepped up their efforts with increasing effectiveness and productivity. It is an impressive movement and one that invites society at large to do even more. Let's use these as examples for "how to get it done" so that we can effectively expand our efforts to give back.
Apr 9, 2010
News of note from our Most Innovative Companies, including Twitter, GE, Netflix, and HTC.
Apr 7, 2010
NBC Universal planted these eco-friendly elements into scripted television shows to influence viewers and help sell ads.
The tactic—General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal calls it "behavior placement"—is designed to sway viewers to adopt actions they see modeled in their favorite shows. And it helps sell ads to marketers who want to associate their brands with a feel-good, socially aware show.
Laurie Burkitt and Ken Bruno
Mar 22, 2010
The Apple iPad, hitting stores April 3, is one of the most-hyped products in technology history. There is talk that it could revolutionize computing and media. But when it comes to new products, great expectations can doom products that don't measure up to them.
Mar 17, 2010
When it comes to rich media ads on the Internet that employ video, engagement matters enormously. Environment, not so much.
That's the major and in some ways surprising takeaway from a new study conducted by VideoEgg and comScore.
The study examined the effectiveness of rich media video ads vs. traditional banners. The goal was to prove the theory that banner ads containing video are more engaging. In addition, the study gauged whether site environment -- particularly contextual relevance -- played a role in how well such ads performed.
Allen Adamson
Mar 2, 2010
"Caution. Not all hazards are marked." I couldn't help but notice this sign on the side of a ski trail during a recent vacation in the mountains. As I slowed my descent I thought about how this sign could apply to any number of things in this crazy world. Being in the brand business, I also thought about how apt they were relative to navigating the current marketplace. It's one thing to watch as consumer attitudes shift and you alter your product or service to meet the new conditions. It's another to sense that something's on the horizon and be the first in the category to address it. The ability to do so has always separated the good brands from the best brands.
Stuart Elliot
Mar 2, 2010
The seemingly continuous commercials during the coverage of the Winter Games on the networks of NBC Universal gave a new meaning to the term “snow job.”
It was as if every spot showed snow, or ice, or both, in which skiers, skaters and snowboarders cavorted. That made it difficult for ad-weary, ad-bleary viewers to distinguish the commercials from the actual coverage of the Vancouver Olympics.
Perhaps that was the sponsors’ fiendish intent: to perpetrate the ultimate blurring of the line between advertising and content.
Jan 24, 2010
Two of America’s best-known companies posted better-than-expected results on Friday, painting a more optimistic picture of the global appetite for everything from hamburgers to healthcare products and services.
Sam Schechner
Jan 22, 2010
NBC has mopped up its late-night mess. The network now faces a more challenging task: rebuilding its evening hours after years of cost cuts and creative missteps.
NBC executives are saying they plan to spend at least 30% more than last year to develop TV series for the fall, and 20% more to market the shows, although they didn't attach a dollar figure to the estimate. The General Electric Co. network, which has seen its ratings and profit slide since 2005, is working on 18 to 20 pilot episodes for new shows, up from 11 last spring.
Jan 22, 2010
General Electric Co. posted a 19% slump in fourth-quarter profit as it was again dinged by a big drop in earnings at its finance arm and substantial weakness at its NBC Universal media unit.
But the overall results topped Wall Street expectations, and the conglomerate heralded "encouraging signs" at its infrastructure divisions.
New orders for big-ticket equipment and services came in at $22.1 billion in the fourth quarter. The figure was off 3% from about $22.8 billion in the year-ago period, but up from $18.4 billion in the third quarter and from $18 billion in the second quarter.
Jan 20, 2010
Conan O'Brien's exit from NBC may allow the Fox network to jump back into late-night television. But first Fox has to sell the idea to its corporate brass and to the managers of the 205 Fox stations, some of whom have reservations. Fox has been mulling a late-night talk show with Mr. O'Brien, who is likely to host his last episode of "The Tonight Show" on Friday after a dispute with NBC over plans to push back the show's air time by half an hour. Fox has said it won't broach the subject in earnest until Mr. O'Brien leaves NBC, which is finalizing the terms of the comedian's departure.
Jan 20, 2010
The Winter Olympics start in 23 days, and NBC expects to lose $200 million on them. But it didn’t have to be that way — even with an economy that has shredded NBC’s advertising assumptions.
In June 2003, executives from NBC, ESPN and Fox gathered at the International Olympic Committee’s headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, to bid for the television rights to the 2010 Winter Games, which had not yet been awarded to Vancouver, and the 2012 Summer Games, which would be given to London.
Jan 19, 2010
Conan O'Brien is close to signing a nearly $40 million deal to walk away from his dream job hosting NBC's "The Tonight Show," bringing down the curtain on one of the entertainment industry's biggest debacles in years.
The comedian's exit agreement, which could be completed as early as Tuesday, bars Mr. O'Brien from bad-mouthing his former NBC bosses, according to people familiar with the matter, but paves the way for him to land another television gig within a year.
Francesco Guerrera
Dec 10, 2009
Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric’s chief executive, said on Wednesday his generation of business leaders had succumbed to “meanness and greed” that had harmed the US economy and increased the gap between the rich and the poor.
Mr Immelt’s attack on his fellow corporate chiefs – made in a speech at the West Point military academy – is one of the strongest criticisms by a top executive of the compensation and business practices that prevailed before the financial crisis.
Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, Kenneth Li and Francesco Guerrera
Dec 3, 2009
Comcast's long-awaited bid for control of NBC Universal will value the joint venture with General Electric at a larger-than-expected $37.25bn, including a higher valuation on the US cable group's pay-television stations and the potential for a larger cash outlay than analysts had foreseen.
Final terms of the deal had been settled in preparation for an announcement this morning, people familiar with the negotiations said, after months of haggling with GE, NBCU's 80 per cent owner, and Vivendi, the French media and telecoms group that holds a 20 per cent stake.
Tim Arango and Bill Carter
Dec 1, 2009
General Electric has reached a tentative agreement that clears the way for the sale of NBC Universal, including the flagship NBC network, to Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, people briefed on the deal said Monday. Under terms of the deal, G.E. will buy Vivendi’s 20 percent stake in NBC Universal for about $5.8 billion. It removes one of the few remaining hurdles in its plan to sell control of the television and movie company to Comcast in a $30 billion agreement that reflects the changing landscape of broadcast television.
Venessa Wong
Nov 6, 2009
At GE, P&G, and other companies, a design perspective is a problem-solving apparatus that can be applied companywide.
Jeffrey R. Immelt, Vijay Govindarajan, and Chris Trimble
Sep 30, 2009
In May 2009, General Electric announced that over the next six years it would spend $3 billion to create at least 100 health-care innovations that would substantially lower costs, increase access, and improve quality. Two products it highlighted at the time—a $1,000 handheld electrocardiogram device and a portable, PC-based ultrasound machine that sells for as little as $15,000—are revolutionary, and not just because of their small size and low price. They’re also extraordinary because they originally were developed for markets in emerging economies (the ECG device for rural India and the ultrasound machine for rural China) and are now being sold in the United States, where they’re pioneering new uses for such machines.
We call the process used to develop the two machines and take them global reverse innovation, because it’s the opposite of the glocalization approach that many industrial-goods manufacturers based in rich countries have employed for decades.
Sep 29, 2009
They do it by talking about and engaging with topics and content that will make their customers smarter. Or they share tidbits that are fun and engaging, and share the love. These are the secrets of successful corporate blogs - and I’ll share then in less than a thousand words.
Aug 15, 2009
THE Internet has changed many things, of course, but one of its more far-reaching effects has been to transform the economics of innovation.
Jun 30, 2009
How advances in mobile and gaming signal what's next for this virtual meets real world technology.
Jun 24, 2009
When is the best time to get a consumer's attention while they're online? When are you most likely to get them to think about your brand with a sales mindset, rather than as an annoyance? These are among the most frequently asked questions by people in the digital marketing industry.
Jun 1, 2009
How do you impress a Star Trek fan? With a new gadget. This one, in fact, is free. If you use your imagination, you can call it a three-dimensional effect.
May 26, 2009
Remember Princess Leia's holographic message to Obi-Wan Kenobi? Madison Avenue does, and it's starting to make 3-D digital images part of its marketing arsenal.
May 24, 2009
For more than a decade, the prevailing view of innovation has been that little guys had the edge. Innovation bubbled up from the bottom, from upstarts and insurgents. Big companies didn’t innovate, and government got in the way. In the dominant innovation narrative, venture-backed start-up companies were cast as the nimble winners and large corporations as the sluggish losers.
Apr 7, 2009
On the day before President Barack Obama's inauguration, Jeffrey R. Immelt tried to give General Electric (GE) investors his own brand of hope. With the world going through a fundamental reset, the GE chairman and CEO told MSNBC viewers: "We've got to come out of this a brand-new company."
That vision has since gotten lost amid the day-to-day concerns that have come to haunt GE.
Apr 3, 2009
General Electric and Intel plan to put their combined research and marketing weight behind a new alliance to develop devices that enable medical professionals to monitor elderly and chronically ill patients remotely.
Mar 12, 2009
Products traditionally are created in rich nations and repackaged for emerging ones. But General Electric, Nokia, and others are reversing the process.
Jan 30, 2009
Superbowl ads are a decent way to see trends. During the dot-com
bubble, you could see ads for various websites. This year, GE will
debut an ad campaign for smart grids. The 30 seconds commercial will
feature "a dancing Scarecrow and will discuss a smarter, more
efficient, and sustainable electrical energy grid." It's impressive
when you think about it: Since when is the electrical grid sexy enough to deserve such an expensive spot?
Dec 16, 2008
General Electric launched a print advertisement this week, along
with new Web video installments, focusing on its message of
innovation and how environmental solutions will be part of the
company's growth.
Davis Thinking
