GE CMO Beth Comstock (@BethComstock) joins the Shorty CMO Jury [interview]
Don’t forget the early entry period for the Shorty Industry Awards ends at the end of the month! Now onto some big news from the Shorty’s Real-Time Academy!
Earlier this fall, we launched our first ever CMO Jury. Now, General Electric (GE) CMO Beth Comstock (@BethComstock) has become the newest member of the jury that will help judge the Shorty Industry Awards!
Beth Comstock leads GE’s growth and market-innovation initiatives, as well as the sales, marketing and communications functions. She is responsible for GE-wide business platforms ecomagination, dedicated to environmental innovation and healthymagination, focused on developing better health outcomes.
In 2003, she was named GE’s first Chief Marketing officer in more than 20 years introducing the ecomagination platform, as well as a new innovation pipeline and the “imagination at work” brand campaign. We interviewed Beth about how she’s personally been using social media and why the social web is extremely important to GE.
Shorty Awards: Why are you personally on social media? How do you use it?
Beth Comstock: If you believe, as I do, that social is going to continue to play an increasingly important role in shaping the way that people connect, live and work, then I think it’s imperative that you, as a CMO, use the technology. I use it to collaborate, stay connected and be inspired. I believe in immersing yourself in something to truly understand it. When you use social platforms, you’ve got to think like a user. Put yourself in their place —that’s what good marketer’s do. What’s the unique value? Why are you relevant? Time is the competition for most of us – what will make your experience worth spending valuable time currency on?
SA: Why is social media important to GE?
Comstock: We believe business is social. And new social media tools and platforms allow a level of intimacy and connectivity that amplifies business impact and helps us tell our story to broader audiences and in new ways. Over the past two years we have worked to sharpen our focus around content creation to tell the GE story in new and different ways – as a big business brand, essentially turning into a content hub that is highly digital and a year ago from now really ramping up – including significantly increasing our digital and content resources towards this strategy.
From overhauling the social strategy, to deploying more video, data visualization and photos, to being one of the first of the big business brands on Instagram, Pinterest, Viddy and SocialCam, and re-launching GE.com around what we call the GE Show (an artistic interactive look at how GE technologies affect everyday life through storytelling on the web), we are finding compelling ways - both lighter and more produced - to tell the GE story to broader audiences and connect in new ways. So far it is resonating and we are seeing increased engagement.
GE is constantly evolving how we engage with customers via these tools as well. We look at everything from the value of compelling social content to product ratings and reviews to customer communities where real-time collaboration and innovation is happening.
The best uses of social media are often the ones that allow you to develop closer relationships with your partners and provide the insights, tools and content to run their businesses better. There is no substitute for meeting partners in person – social makes the relationship more iterative and ongoing.
SA: Any social marketing campaigns you’re most proud of from the past year?
Comstock: We’ve run a number of interesting campaigns this year, but GE Flyovers was one of my favorite. It was a three-week, behind-the-scenes experience at GE facilities, where we captured aerial footage from the factory floor and let people vote on what they wanted to see and learn more about.
Over the course of GE Flyovers, we captured votes across GE.com, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and BuzzFeed, and shot exclusive footage at GE Healthcare in Laurel, MD, GE Aviation in West Jefferson, NC and GE Transportation in Grove City, PA. The program earned over 500,000 video views across four main videos:
-GE Flyovers: Pre-Mission Briefing
-Mission 1: Where Do Baby Incubators Come From -
-Mission 2: Building Jet Engines and the Birthplace of Flight
-Mission 3: Behold the Locomotive
We’ve found that people enjoy and relate to our impact on the world more when they are an active part of the storytelling process and this is one of the best examples of collaborative storytelling with our audiences – and it also helps that our plants are fascinating to explore.
Congratulations to GE on an amazing year and don’t forget to enter the Shorty Industry Awards.
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