How We Think

GE may have changed their tagline more than a decade ago after almost 25 years but they are still bringing good things to life… and I’m not talking about lightbulbs and appliances or jet engines and wind turbines. In September, GE launch a new campaign called “What’s the matter with Owen?” on late night TV. This campaign featured in AdAge and AdWeek is designed to serve a dual purpose: to position GE as a digital industrial company AND to recruit young professionals to join GE. 

The idea that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” is often attributed to P.T. Barnum, 19^th century circus owner and showman, but today it is KFC putting the old adage to the test by bringing back the late great Colonel Harland Sanders. In May, KFC launched a new campaign featuring SNL-alum Darrell Hammond as the Colonel. The ads generated quite the buzz both in industry publications with features in both AdAge and AdWeek on the same day, a week before the campaign went live, and in the popular media landing the No. 3 spot on the Viral Video Chart with almost 10 million views in the first week.

This month KHJ is rolling out phase two of a brand campaign we created for Commonwealth Care Alliance, a not-for-profit care delivery system that provides patient-centric solutions for beneficiaries of Medicare and Medicaid. As I think back over the year since we first began working together to bring their brand to life, I continue to be struck by the sameness of the healthy, active people featured in typical health care advertising and can’t help but start to hum that old R.E.M. song, “Shiny, Happy People.”

A friend and fellow General Mills alum recently commented on an Ad Age article titled “How General Mills Is Creating a Content Factory” featuring General Mill’s CMO, Mark Addicks, who gave the keynote speech at the recent Ad Age Digital Conference focusing on the importance of content creation. While I agree with my friend’s assessment that Mark is a brilliant marketer, as are most of the folks at General Mills, I am not quite sure I agree that content creation is a particularly new idea.

When I was at General Mills in the late 1990s, we celebrated Betty Crocker’s 75^th birthday with various promotions and the unveiling of a new portrait. For those who aren’t familiar with the story, Betty was“born” in 1921 to offer personal answers to consumers’ questions about baking. In 1924 she introduced the country’s first radio cooking show, called “The Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air.” In 1950 she introduced her big red cookbook, officially named the “Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook,” which can still be found in most kitchens. I know I have one I use regularly. In the more recent past, she not surprisingly launched her own website, www.BettyCrocker.com.