Seat at the Table

While reading a news site I noticed a box with business articles relating to the environment…then I noticed that while the articles were real, the box was an advertisement box sponsored by GE for their Ecomagination campaign.  This seems like a great example of using the trust of third party media to directly deliver a corporate message (my favorite being the simply, yet effective direct mail dissemination of article reprints).

By putting out Ecomagination advertisements that simply display (on a landing site) environmental business news from Reuters, GE is showing a strategy that hits the viewer at mulitple levels:

1. The viewer is more likley to view the ad since it contains real editorial as opposed to marketing copy (just my feeling - though I’d love to test this theory).
2. The viewer is more likely to click through if the ad is well targeted to people interested in news about environment issues and business (as I was).
3. GE’s environmental message gets more viewing time both on the ad and on the click through site.
4. GE is aligned with a trusted third party (media) that is reporting news and not marketing messages.
5. The whole experience of reading environmental business news sends the message that GE is interested in being an environmentally friendly business and one that nature’s green as resulting in business green.