Online Video Advertising Campaign for GE

Broadcasting ecomagination

PROBLEM:
Increasingly, social responsibility has a larger role to play in shaping a company's success. At GE, corporate citizenship is a business imperative and the driving force behind GE's ecomagination commitment, a global strategy to address the environmental and operating challenges facing GE’s customers, emerging markets and society at large. GE business and marketing leaders have been tasked with turning this strategy into operation and communicating the real benefits of this approach.

As GE’s interactive advertising agency of record, Beeby Clark+Meyler was asked to create an integrated online campaign for ecomagination designed to engage the business audience and inform them about GE’s wide array of innovative products. The campaign’s brand building objectives were to effectively communicate GE’s ecomagination story as well as:

• Improve unaided awareness of GE as an "environmentally conscious" company
• Improve "ecomagination" message association.

SOLUTION:

Beeby Clark+Meyler set out to show GE's products in action around the world via an online video advertising campaign that also integrated with TV and print. The message, tone and style underscored GE’s proactive approach to taking on some of the world's toughest environmental problems. Original content, particularly films and video created exclusively for the Web, further enabled our ability to tell the GE ecomagination story.

Two key insights drove GE's online approach to this campaign. Online video growth has been out-pacing all other digital media. And online video ads have proven to be more effective in lifting awareness and persuasion metrics.

The online plan was comprised of the following key elements during a 10-week period:

• Six original 2-minute videos were produced to run in two-week installments. They featured an energetic and light-hearted host, who talked to consumers in various cities around the world about different GE products.
• The videos were played within a custom-built Flash player designed for the larger 300x250 and 720x90 ad units.v
• Multiple engagement formats were tested to gauge maximum effectiveness: Roll-over to initiate; click to initiate; sound activation upon page load; click to activate sound.
• Videos from previous weeks became available for viewing within the Flash player.
• A day-parted interactive plan was devised to deliver all impressions between 8am and 3pm, Tuesday through Thursday - the busiest period for professional Internet consumption.
• The plan focused on a select group of sites that offered broad reach and a willingness to "break the rules," regarding the use of the Flash player.
• Impressions were skewed to favor new video premiers and special event days.

RESULTS:

 The ecomagination campaign was one of the most successful interactive campaigns ever conducted by GE. GE experienced major surges in Web site activity:

• Total site visits increased +357%
• Total page views increased +137%
• Total time spent on the site increased +452%, with more than 7 million minutes of user engagement

The campaign met the business goal of effectively communicating GE’s ecomagination story. Brand-tracking studies reported:

• 14% improvement in unaided awareness of GE as an "environmentally conscious" company;
• 10.5% improvement in ecomagination message association.