GE and the Art of Brand Reinvention

The Unconventionals

GE is Thomas Edison’s company, with a heritage of industrial innovation that goes back more than 100 years. But you’d be excused for missing this during the heyday of GE Capital, when financial services delivered 50% of corporate profit.

GE is shedding its financial services division. And it’s no longer in the refrigerator and microwave oven business. But the GE story is more about reinvention than retreat. It is looking to its mission and history as guides for how to reimagine itself. GE is deliberately applying its DNA around invention not just to its products but in how it tells its story to the world.

In the first episode of our fifth season, host Mike O’Toole sits down with Linda Boff, GE’s Chief Marketing Officer, about the recent changes GE has undergone. They discuss GE’s move to the forefront of the digital industrial market—the internet of “really big things.” And they talk marketing and brand—there is perhaps not a more innovative B2B marketer on the planet, and we can learn a lot about where GE is placing its bets in social platforms, content marketing, not to mention its brand strategy.