Page 233 - Marketing Management

210 PART 3 CONNECTING WITH CUSTOMERS

Marketing Excellence giant,” and increased the company’s market value from
$12 billion in 1981 to $280 billion in 2001, making it the
>>GE world’s most valuable corporation at the time.
In 2003, GE and the company’s new CEO, Jeffrey
Immelt, faced a fresh challenge; how to promote its diver-
sified brand with a unified global message. After extensive
consumer research, the company launched a major new
campaign called “Imagination at Work,” which highlighted
its renewed focus on innovation and new technology. The
award-winning campaign promoted units such as GE
Aircraft Engines, GE Medical Systems, and GE Plastics,
focusing on the breadth of GE’s product offerings. GE ini-
tially spent over $150 million on corporate advertising, a
significant expenditure but one that created efficiencies by
focusing on the core GE brand. The goal was to unify
these divisions under the GE brand while giving them a
voice. “When you’re a company like ours, with 11 differ-
ent businesses, brand is really important in pulling the
General Electric (GE) is made identity of the company together,” said former Chief
up of five major divisions that operate in a wide range of Marketing Officer Beth Comstock. “Integration was im-
industries: Energy (Energy, Oil & Gas, Water and Process portant in communicating the brand across the organiza-
Technologies), Technology Infrastructure (Aviation, tion and to all of our constituents.”
Enterprise Solutions, Healthcare, Transportation), GE The new integrated campaign got results. “Research
Capital (Commercial Lending & Leasing, Consumer indicates GE is now being associated with attributes such
Financing, Energy Financial Services, GE Capital Aviation as being high tech, leading edge, innovative, contempo-
Services, Real Estate Financing), NBC Commercial rary, and creative,” stated Judy Hu, GE’s general manager
(Cable, Film, Networks, Parks & Resorts), and Consumer for global advertising and branding. In addition, survey
& Industrial (Appliances, Consumer Electronics, Electrical respondents continued to associate GE with some of its
Distribution, Lighting). As a result, GE sells a diverse array traditional attributes, including trust and reliability.
of products and services from home appliances to jet en- In 2005, the company extended the campaign with its
gines, security systems, wind turbines, and financial next initiative, “Ecomagination,” which highlighted the com-
services. GE’s revenues topped $161 billion in 2009, pany’s efforts to develop environmentally friendly “green”
making it so large that if each of its five business units technologies such as solar energy, lower-emission engines,
were ranked separately, they all would appear in the and water purification technologies. The company lever-
Fortune 200. If GE were its own country, it would be the aged the “Imagination” tagline again with a 2006 campaign
50th largest in the world, ahead of Kuwait, New Zealand, called “Health Care Re-Imagined” that featured innovative
and Iraq. GE health care products for detecting, preventing, and
Thomas Edison originally founded the company as the curing diseases.
Edison Electric Light Company in 1878. The company, Immelt made some strategic restructuring decisions
which soon changed its name to General Electric, became that helped the company survive the worldwide recession
an early pioneer in lightbulbs and electrical appliances and of 2008 and 2009 and also helped shift it even more in the
served the electrical needs of various industries, such as B2B direction. GE moved from 11 divisions to 5 and sold
transportation, utilities, manufacturing, and broadcasting. off some of its consumer-focused businesses, including
GE became the acknowledged pioneer in business-to- 51 percent of NBC Universal (sold to Comcast). This shift
business marketing in the 1950s and 1960s under the allowed GE to spend more resources on innovation,
tagline “Progress Is Our Most Important Product.” green initiatives, and its growing businesses such as
As the company diversified its business-to-business power generation, aviation, medical-imaging, and cell
product lines in the 1970s and 1980s, it created new technologies. GE continued to use the Ecomagination
corporate campaigns, including “Progress for People” campaign and introduced “Healthymagination,” which
and “We Bring Good Things to Life.” In 1981, Jack Welch communicated its advances in medical technologies
succeeded Reginald Jones as GE’s eighth CEO. Over around the world.
Welch’s two decades of leadership, he helped grow GE GE’s recent corporate campaigns have united its busi-
from an “American manufacturer into a global services ness units, but its success rests on its ability to understand