GE has long used TV advertisements to encourage consumers to purchase a host of various products. So it shouldn’t be terribly surprising that the company’s healthcare division kicked off–over the course of the recently completed Vancouver Olympics–GE’s largest ever campaign aimed at consumers. After all, healthcare is big news these days. The surprise hits you only after you realize that the corporation’s biggest ever campaign aimed at consumers is, in point of fact, focused on a line of products and services that regular consumers will most likely never purchase. Here’s The New York Times:
Its role in health care is technical: G.E. makes and sells medical devices, like machines that measure bone density and perform M.R.I. scans. But the advertising focuses on the personal. “In the past, we have always shown the hardware, and that’s great — it works on one level — but we wanted to make a point here that this was about better health for more people,” said Don Schneider, executive creative director for BBDO New York, the Omnicom Group agency that created most of the ads.
Beth Comstock, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at G.E., said that the company was trying to make health care more accessible — both in terms of consumers understanding it and in terms of providing cheaper, more widely available devices. (By 2015, G.E. has said, it will invest $6 billion in research and development for health care products and technology.)
“This is a way to start to build awareness for G.E. in this space,” Ms. Comstock said.
Ms. Comstock said that the health care debate in Washington “didn’t really affect the timing,” although it had renewed peoples’ interest in the topic.
Take a look at one of these ads, right here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiDPc-yMrYw&feature=player_embedded
This is, obviously, an interesting strategy. The ads themselves benefit from the freedom afforded by a lack of pressure to, you know, sell anything. These GE ads focus on nothing besides communicating value. While, as we’ve seen above, GE denies any connection this campaign may have to the political attention devoted to healthcare, it hardly seems coincidental. From the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel: “‘Companies like GE want to position themselves as good guys who are helping save lives, not bad guys who are driving up costs,’ said Andy Larsen, a partner at the Milwaukee-based Boelter & Lincoln advertising agency.”
Marketing, as we know, doesn’t need to be focused on convincing a consumer to purchase a product. GE Healthcare is hoping to shape the terms of a national debate, the resolution of which will have a crucial impact on the direction of an entire industry. The overall viability of the industry is a far greater concern at this point than the exact number of MRI scanners GE sells. And that’s why the company’s biggest ever campaign aimed at consumers doesn’t try to sell anything to consumers.
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