By Catarina Gunnarsson-Tågmark
This is a story about change, and marketing's role as an agent
of change. GE has a tradition of constant change and evolution.
Today, we operate four businesses in more than 100 countries
and employ over 300,000 people. Our challenge, as a company,
as people, and as a brand, is to strike the perfect balance between
remembering where we came from while charging forward into the
future.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, we were hitting our numbers.
We were growing our businesses. Our employees, customers, and
shareholders were happy. In fact, when word spread that we were
looking at changing a winning formula, some were skeptical. What?
After a century of building a reputation for rock-solid consistency
and reliability we were going to overhaul the brand? Were we
crazy?
GE was seen as a strong, old, reliable, constantly evolving
company since we first commercialized the light bulb in 1876.
Since then, we have been adapting and assimilating to the world
around us. And, in the early 2000s, the world was changing. Fast.
Debates raged over globalization. The entire concept of the
corporation as an economic, social and political force in the
world was being re-examined. Then the dotcom bubble burst. Then
9/11 happened.
Our company was changing, too. A new generation of leadership
was emerging. Jeff Immelt took over as Chairman and CEO in 2001,
just four days before the terror attacks at the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon.
Our product mix was evolving. We were building nextgeneration
automobile bodies out of industrial plastics as strong as steel.
Our locomotives and gas turbines were squeezing more performance
and lower emissions out of less fuel. We were creating the world's
fastest, most fuel-efficient jet engines.
Whenever people heard about the things we were doing, their
reaction was "Wow!" The trouble was, people hadn't
heard about them. In fact, a lot of people-especially in the
US-still saw GE as a lighting and appliances company. After all,
our products have had a presence inside just about every American
home.
If your customers see the company you used to be more than
the company you are, it's not their problem, it's yours. For
marketing to drive growth, we knew we had to be able to lead
change. Take risks, help develop a pipeline of great breakthrough
products, and market them like crazy. The point of marketing
was to help grow the company. Along the way, we figured out that
the brand itself could be a catalyst for growth.
When we began the process of re-branding GE, we wanted to be
very careful to not just make a bunch of TV commercials with
a new look and feel and declare ourselves "re-branded."We
were expected to accomplish much more. Drive future sales. Stimulate
cross sales. Attract and retain customers. Bring stateof- the
art products and services to market. Enhance our value in the
marketplace.
What we found out is that brand can actually do this and much
more.
The journey officially began in early 2002. We needed to understand
exactly who we were and what we stood for before we could figure
out how to articulate who we would become. We needed to translate
that learning into a strategy. And we had to execute and bring
the brand principles to life in a dramatic way to signal change
and capture the public's and our employees' imagination about
the "new" GE.
We queried employees, customers, investors, and other stakeholders
in a variety of quantitative and qualitative studies - more research
that we had done in our history. In the US, people knew us well
for what we had done in the past. But in the image of being good,
old, reliable GE, there were dangers. We risked being seen as
less innovative and less creative. Our rich heritage made it
harder for us to be regarded as dynamic. Outside the US, people
just didn't know us nearly as well.
So the challenge was clear: We needed a bridge from GE's remarkable
roots to a future we hadn't yet imagined.
THE BRAND RENAISSANCE
From that day
forward the GE brand needed to accomplish two things: First,
it had to evolve public perception of GE beyond 'lighting and
appliances'. Second, it needed to form the basis for a cultural
shift inside GE.
We redefined our mission statement as a sort of mathematical
equation, highlighting the elements that resonate with our internal
culture, as well as the aspirations of generations to come. We
wanted to get the idea across that you could find these breakthrough
ideas in the mailroom, in the regional call centres, or if you're
running algorithms for the credit card business. That what we
can imagine, we can make happen.
This brand promise became a powerful mission statement not
only for the creative team. For our employees, it became a theme
to innovate.
Little did we know that what started, in effect, as an advertising
campaign would become the perfect articulation of our company's
personality and aspirations. The marketing function-using "Imagination
at Work" as its rallying cry-was engaging people around
our technology, communicating innovation, signaling change, humanizing
GE and making us more contemporary.
We also needed to simplify the brand architecture and spent
18 months developing an architecture that allows each of our
businesses to connect more directly with its customers. Across
the company, we initiated a more streamlined and disciplined
approach to branding. To help our sales and marketing people
worldwide, we unveiled a new look and feel that, we believed,
built on our heritage and allowed us to speak with a fresher,
more approachable and global voice.
We also gave the GE logo a facelift. The GE monogram is one
of the most recognized and valuable symbols in the world, but
it needed a more contemporary look. The serious black and white
logo reflected the strength and sturdiness of an established
industrial company. We now present the GE monogram in 14 colors
and communicate warmth, humanity, and approachability. We trained
hundreds of people around the world to be brand partners, to
share the program elements and help them decidebusiness by business,
market by market- the best way to communicate with their customers
within the framework. Across the company, we have increased brand
accountability, innovation and impact.
Preaching imagination is one thing. Making it effective-and
measuring results-is quite another. The real work-the tough,
grueling work-lay ahead. The biggest test was the introduction
of the "Imagination Breakthrough" company-wide effort
to have marketing drive incremental, organic revenue by leading
projects to develop new products and new markets.
Ecomagination is a business initiative to help meet customers'
demand for more energy-efficient products. It reflects GE's commitment
to invest in a future that creates innovative solutions to environmental
challenges and delivers valuable products and services to customers
while generating profitable growth for GE. Through partnerships
with customers, governments, nongovernmental organizations and
universities, we can execute on our products and services to
help address some of the world's big challenges.
At GE, the Imagination Breakthroughs and ecomagination concepts
are two of the best examples of what we mean by strategic marketing
through 'imagination at work'. Read more at http://www.ecomagination.com/ Looking back and looking ahead
This is a story about change, and marketing's role as an agent
of change.
This is also a story about who you are and who you want to
become-and what you have to do to evolve and grow. As tempting
as it may be to cling to an identity that worked wonders in the
past, you have to believe in the possibilities of your brand
for the future. Evolving as a brand isn't about rejecting who
you are; it's about becoming a better version of the company
you started as.
And "Imagination at Work" has taught us that one
is never too
old to re-invent,
re-invigorate and re-imagine one's brand. Finally, this story
is far from over. The last chapter won't be written until a century
from now. Only then will it be known if GE indeed became the
pre-eminent growth company of the 21st century. Find out more
about GE at http://www.ge.com/ TW
| Catarina Gunnarsson-Tågmark
is International Brand Manager, GE, based in Brussels, Belgium.
This article is based on a presentation she made at Metso
Paper's Tissue Making 2008 conference in Karlstad 18-19 September. |
How
GE leverages its brand to create growth