Note to GE Healthcare: Talk to Judy Hu

Posted on | January 16, 2007 | Comments Off on Note to GE Healthcare: Talk to Judy Hu

A recent Wall Street Journal article featured an interview with Judy Hu, General Electric‘s global executive director of advertising and branding. The interview and Ms. Hu’s responses focused on the challenges of holding viewers’ attention, specifically to GE ads, in an age of digital video recorders that allow viewers to super-speed their way through programming and, in effect, skip over the ads. The solution? Innovate by focusing on corporate image over commercial product; by customization and inclusion of viewers in the ads; and by ramping up the production value.

In Ms. Hu’s words, “…what we’re showing aren’t ads in their usual format. What we’re showing are pieces of film that are highly entertaining. They are new. They are creatively done, and they are beautifully produced, and they capture people’s imagination. That’s why people will go to them.”

Here’s another reason. In some test ads to be aired in Erie, Pa, and Cincinnati, Ohio, images of local workers are embedded for one second in the ads themselves. Called “One Second Theater,” these ads are designed to include viewers, particularly those with DVRs who can slow down the ads to see the one second of additional content. Viewers want to see if they or their neighbors, friends or co-workers made it to TV.

Hu explains, “…what we like to say is we gave audiences a second and they gave us two minutes.” As to advertising off-product, she says “The whole campaign — ‘Imagination at Work’ was really designed to help change the image of GE … What we really want to do is speak to our clients, investors, potential recruits, in a way, in a human way, that touches their minds and hearts as well as in a rational way …”

Note to GE Healthcare: Sit down and talk to Judy. You say your mission is to “provide(s) transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care.” Well here’s the opportunity — compelling narrative video that’s entertaining, educational and motivational and that moves people to get ahead of the disease curve, to plan, to act — and act early; and that is inclusive, high production, and off-product. This is an essential missing lever and the next step in flipping the health care system from intervention to prevention. GE Healthcare is ideally positioned, alone or in partnership, to support the informational and planning needs of the evolving health consumer “in a human way” and “in a rational way.” Come on GE Healthcare — use your imagination!