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Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

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330 BRAND RELEVANCE<br />

The innovation thrust emphasized cross - business fertilizing.<br />

Crotonville, by bringing people together from across the fi rm, had<br />

long fostered cross - silo communication and cooperation. One<br />

of the Global Research Center ’ s functions is to leverage technology<br />

by applying it throughout the fi rm ’ s business units. To further<br />

develop cross - silo cooperation, Immelt encouraged teams from<br />

across the company to engage in innovation focused around<br />

products and opportunities. As a part of this effort, Immelt<br />

started Session T (T stands for technology), through which a<br />

marketing team for one business and a technology team from<br />

a very different business meet with the center ’ s scientists and talk<br />

about a market need. It was in such a meeting that the energy<br />

group was able to learn about lightweight materials developed<br />

by the aircraft engine business that could be applied to the wind<br />

business. The wind business also reached out to rail business<br />

experts to improve the gearing systems of the wind products.<br />

These improvements and others allowed the wind business,<br />

which GE purchased from Enron in 2002 for around $ 350 million,<br />

to grow to some $ 6 billion in sales six years later.<br />

The new GE innovation culture affected the way the brand<br />

was presented to the market as well. The venerable slogan “ We<br />

bring good things to life ” was replaced with “ Imagination at<br />

work, ” a concept that resonated with employees as well as customers<br />

and reinforced the growth - through - innovation thrust.<br />

As part of the new GE growth strategy to become an innovation<br />

leader in the ecology and energy space, Immelt in 2005<br />

launched ecomagination to provide an umbrella brand over<br />

all the GE green initiatives, illustrated by the GE ad shown in<br />

Figure 11.1 . By branding the innovative wind, solar, and other<br />

green business units, GE generated a sense of cohesiveness for<br />

an important part of its business strategy and provided a vehicle<br />

to get marketplace credit for the strategy. The resulting image<br />

not only enhanced the perceived innovativeness of the fi rm but<br />

also provided a basis for a relationship with the green segment.

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