There was only one thing Linda Boff was afraid of when GE introduced a series of TV spots featuring a character called “Owen” last fall: Would the rest of the world find the company’s self-mockery as funny and accurate as employees did?
Despite being called the 10th most valuable brand in the world, GE is facing stiff competition for talent from startups. That’s where Owen came in. In the commercials, a millennial-aged new grad talks excitedly about getting hired at GE, while his friends show more enthusiasm for someone who is starting work at Zazzi, an app whose purpose is unclear.
In a recent series of video interviews on company transformation with law firm Morgan, Lewis and Bockius LLP, Boff said she’d come to realize her role as CMO of GE is to be upfront about how others may view the company.
“I think sometimes acknowledging what people think about you and the perceptions can be very disarming. Because it’s the truth,” she said. “People can’t really believe that a software developer would want to go to GE. When we showed Owen internally first to our employees, I think everyone really related to it.”
Since the ads launched last September, recruiting efforts at GE have improved eight-fold, Boff said, and a new set of ads will launch later this year showing the tides have turned, and now everyone wants in on the kind of opportunities Owen has found at GE. This is all part of what Boff described as a pivot in GE’s marketing to a “digital industrial company” that focuses on health care, transportation and energy.
“It’s a journey where we start by driving mindshare, and marketshare follows,” she said. For example, GE started introducing terms in its messaging that showed it was keeping current with tech trends, describing the areas it works in as “the industrial internet,” or “the Internet of Really Big Things.” The company is also moving offices from Fairfield, Va. to Boston to be closer to university talent and the startup community. These are all elements that Boff said helped her and her team evolve the brand.
“We show up with credibility, we show up with trust,” she said. “But, we also have to be relevant, contemporary, modern.”
Now that the public may realize GE has a sense of humour, Boff said the company was trying to ensure it acts and behaves differently. This means cutting through bureaucracy, ensuring staff have the right tools to collaborate or even crowdsource ideas. GE has even introduced an internal methodology, called FastWorks, that borrows from the “lean startup” principles popular in Silicon Valley.
Beyond staying true to how you are as a brand and identifying where you can have the greatest impact, Boff suggested other CMOs be consistent, and learn to embrace repetition.
“When we get sick of hearing something internally is just when people on the outside might start to pay attention to it,” she said.
