Multi­na­tion­al con­glom­er­ate Gen­er­al Elec­tric, or GE, makes for an inter­est­ing case study in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing. On the one hand, it is an instant­ly rec­og­niz­able brand that touch­es con­sumers’ lives vir­tu­al­ly every day, but, at the same time, GE often acts behind the scenes with com­pli­cat­ed tech­nol­o­gy that doesn’t always lend itself to sto­ries that are easy to tell con­sumers. GE is also a 100+-year-old brand. That means GE has a long his­to­ry to tap into, but must find new ways to tell those sto­ries to new audi­ences on new plat­forms.

At the “Sto­ry­telling: The Dig­i­tal Expe­ri­ence” pan­el at New York’s Adver­tis­ing Week, Lin­da Boff, exec­u­tive direc­tor of glob­al brand mar­ket­ing at GE,  talked about how GE in par­tic­u­lar reach­es con­sumers, con­nects with new audi­ences and incor­po­rates new plat­forms.

“A com­pelling sto­ry is time hon­ored,” Boff said. “It was true 5, 10, 50 years ago. It’s how we share what is inter­est­ing and what moves us. It may be in vogue, but I’m not sure it was ever out of vogue.”

This is how GE con­tin­ues to tell its sto­ry.

Tip 1: Be Willing To Experiment

Accord­ing to Boff, GE did a Vine the day the plat­form launched and it “blew up online.”

“We said, ‘Here’s a new plat­form and let’s try it out…let’s do a sim­ple exper­i­ment,’ and the response was such that we decid­ed, ‘Let’s keep going – there’s some­thing here,’” Boff said of the videos that turned into the brand­s’s #SixSec­ond­Science Fair.

Tip 2: Make Connections, Don’t Just Sell Stuff

When GE cre­ates a Vine, it is cre­at­ing con­tent that falls under the sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion umbrel­las.

“Our eval­u­a­tion is brand per­cep­tion, not sell­ing a jet engine,” Boff said.

And as plat­forms like Vine and Hyper­lapse emerge, Boff said the ini­tial goal is sim­ply find­ing ways to use the tools rather than con­nect­ing with an audi­ence per se.

“We were on Insta­gram three and a half years ago,” Boff said. “It was a plat­form to show off the majesty and nobil­i­ty of big machines and some bad ass tech­nol­o­gy.”

Vine, on the oth­er hand, “couldn’t be more dif­fer­ent,” she said. “We real­ly do believe in serendip­i­ty. Peo­ple bump into it con­tex­tu­al­ly.”

In oth­er words, great con­tent that res­onates with a spe­cif­ic audi­ence will find its way to that audi­ence and be shared because it is great con­tent.

Tip 3: Be Willing To Make Mistakes

GE tries to active­ly use each plat­form and has made it part of its strat­e­gy to be an ear­ly adopter, which Boff said aligns with the brand’s rai­son d’etre as a com­pa­ny found­ed by Thomas Edi­son.

“That’s our busi­ness strat­e­gy. We don’t wake up and say, ‘Should we be doing this?’ We’ve giv­en our­selves per­mis­sion to skin our knees from time to time,” Boff said.

Tip 4: Get A Supportive Team

Boff also said that will­ing­ness to exper­i­ment aris­es thanks in part to “tremen­dous back­ing from our CMO,” which comes along with a cer­tain amount of auton­o­my. In oth­er words, these projects don’t get tied up wait­ing for per­mis­sion from GE’s legal depart­ment.

Tip 5: Find News Hooks And Have Fun With It

Boff said she was wear­ing sneak­ers that were repro­duc­tions of the boots Neil Arm­strong wore on the moon.

“One of the things we’ve tried to do is mash up con­text and then time­ly, real-time ground­ed hooks,” she said. “This past spring, we said the [45th anniver­sary of the] moon land­ing is com­ing up and, for us, GE played a part – the orig­i­nal boots had GE mate­r­i­al – so we said, ‘How can we have some fun with this?’”

The answer? GE part­nered with shop­ping com­mu­ni­ty Jack­Threads to recre­ate the moon boots and put them on sale on the day and moment of the orig­i­nal moon land­ing for $196.90. They sold out in sev­en min­utes and then reap­peared on eBay a few days lat­er for thou­sands of dol­lars, Boff said.

Tip 6: Leverage Nostalgia And Scarcity

Accord­ing to Boff, the point was not to make mon­ey – although, in hind­sight, they prob­a­bly could have.

“We have to pull back and remind our­selves we’ve had piv­otal roles in history…and that’s part of our future,” Boff said. “We’re invest­ing a lot of time in new mate­ri­als and this is a way for us to make it inter­est­ing.”

In a relat­ed effort, GE got Buzz Aldrin to launch the brand on Snapchat with some draw­ings.

“It opened our eyes to oth­er kinds of com­merce plays…that are back to acces­si­ble and touch­able for brand focused on essen­tial tech­nol­o­gy,” Boff said.

Not only did GE tell a sto­ry with the moon boots, but it also played on nos­tal­gia and con­sumers love that kind of con­tent, said anoth­er pan­elist, David Beebe, glob­al VP of cre­ative and con­tent mar­ket­ing for Mar­riott Inter­na­tion­al.

And as there were only a lim­it­ed num­ber of boots for sale, scarci­ty also helped, Boff said.

Tip 7: Think Outside The Proverbial Box

Part of the rea­son the brand worked with Jack­Threads was because it appeals to men who are in their 20s and ear­ly 30s.

“We did a con­tent series on JackThreads…and got a ton of PR,” Boff said. “We got more press for this than any­thing I can remem­ber on the mar­ket­ing side. The reac­tion was amazing…it wasn’t just a sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy crowd. We were in Van­i­ty Fair and Women’s Wear Dai­ly.”

That meant GE was able to reach a new audi­ence, she said.

“When you’re a brand that is 122 years old, you are con­stant­ly bump­ing up against brands that are new­er and more fresh and have new ways to talk sim­ply by being new,” she added.

In order to get con­sumers to spend time with a brand when time is a scarci­ty, Boff said brands must find like­mind­ed part­ners on big top­ics. That includes a deal with come­di­an and author Baratunde Thurston on GE’s Mas­ter­class video series, “know­ing he would approach with a tonal­i­ty that would appeal to oth­ers,” Boff said. “It’s a dif­fer­ent way in and a dif­fer­ent audi­ence.”

Tip 8: Make It Authentic

When it comes to real-time mar­ket­ing, as tempt­ing as it is to fol­low Oreo’s lead at the Super Bowl, there’s also the risk of jump­ing on the band­wag­on for the sake of jump­ing on the band­wag­on, which isn’t effec­tive, Boff said.

Instead, con­tent has to be authen­tic and it “has to be ground­ed in some­thing that’s inter­est­ing and real.”

Tip 9: Look to Netflix

When asked about the future of sto­ry­telling and tech­nol­o­gy, Boff said, “Net­flix is writ­ing the book on this one,” and calls the brand “the per­fect exam­ple of the two” and “quite inspired.”

What’s your take on GE’s efforts to tell its sto­ry on dig­i­tal plat­forms? Which tips res­onate the most with you?