In this week’s episode of Scratch, Eric talks to GE CMO, Linda Boff, and Global Head of Brand Marketing, Zara Mirza, about GE’s Purpose Campaign and how discovering and amplifying its brand purpose keeps a global company like GE in touch with its nearly 200,000 employees, and countless teams, partners, investors, and customers. Eric’s favorite video to come out of the Purpose Campaign is the brilliantly produced Employee Takeover by Chief Test Pilot, Jon Ohman, which you can watch here.
To wrap up the episode, Eric talks to Molly Johnson-Jones, Co-Founder and CEO of Flexa, about what her company is doing to promote flexible working.
Transcript
Linda: You know, for a company that's nearly 130 years old, they're through lines, how we operate, how we act, the responsibility we have to each other. And I think that's the the yin to the yang of our external brand in many ways.
Eric: I'm Eric Fulwiler. And this is scratch, bringing you marketing lessons from leading brands and brains rewriting the rulebook from scratch with a world of today.
Eric: Hey, everyone, today's episode is with Linda BAF and Zara Mirza from General Electric talking about their recent purpose campaign building a world that works that actually launched back in 2020. But it is a massive platform to the brand and they've done some really interesting extensions to it since then, and it will be living and breathing for a long time to come. Linda is an old client and old friends amazing marketer, one of my favourite out there, she's the CMO of General Electric leading all global marketing. She is one of our week's hottest digital marketers. And number five on business insiders. 50 most innovative CMOs, and Zara is the head of Global Marketing, and she is ex Head of Global excellence at McCartney. The things I found really interesting about this conversation is of course, we're talking a lot about brand purpose. But it was really fascinating to hear Linda and Zara talk about how they went about finding insights that led to the brand purpose and how it came from within and just the process they went through which of course for business like General Electric that scale was massive. But I think the way they approached it is relevant to any brands. We also talked a lot about especially for b2b. But I think it's relevant to any marketer, how to humanise your brand's how to make sure it's coming across in a way that people actually want to engage with, and find interesting. And then lastly, I love both windows are talking about this, but it's something I've heard Linda talk about before, making sure that there's healthy creative tension within the creative process. Whether you're doing a massive, you know, grand purpose campaign, or just a small activation, you really need that tension to bring about best results. And Linda has some great suggestions for people about how to do that in the work that you do. So, without further ado, please enjoy this episode with Linda and Zara.
Eric: Hello, Linda Zara, thank you so much for joining me. How are you doing today?
Linda: Great, Eric. Thanks so much for having us. It's so it's wonderful to see you.
Zara: Thank you. Doing great. Missing seeing Linda in person, but we're gonna be back together soon.
Eric: Amazing. So Zara, this is the first time that we've met or what meeting counts for in today's day and age. But Linda, obviously, we go way back to my first go round at VaynerMedia.
And yeah, it's great to see you after so long and cover some of the old ground that we've talked about many times in terms of building brand and driving business growth with modern marketing.
Linda: We did, we broke a lot of ground together. And I'm excited to kind of revisit some of that and talk about what we're doing now and how we built on a lot of those early thoughts.
Eric: Amazing. All right, so let's get into it. So let's start with just a bit of a brief kind of bio of how you two got to the roles that you have at GE and maybe a bit of an overview of what those roles are now, so Zara, should we start with you?
Zara: Yes, sure. So I worked for Linda and I had a global brand marketing really have the privilege and the responsibility of stewarding the beautiful and great GE brand. And make sure it's strong and relevant for the ever, ever changing needs of our customers, our employees, our investors,
Eric: and Linda.
Linda: Yeah, so I'm rounding 15 years at GE, I'm our CMO. I also look after a lot of the work that we do in culture and training. And those intersections are really powerful intersections, because it's not just how we design and I look at the brand externally with all those stakeholders, but also from an internal point of view, you know, our culture and how employees feel as kind of our ultimate brand ambassadors. So it's a it's a great role. I love the company. I love working with Zara and I just every day I feel lucky to work on this brand.
Eric: Amazing.
Sorry to go off script for the very beginning, although I think I'm kind of making a habit of that with this podcast. But hey Linda, just because we were talking about a little bit before we press record, and I think it'd be really interesting for the people listening. You mentioned how there's kind of the brand and the external facing part of your role, but then also the internal one, and it's not just internal comms. I know knowing the way you think about it is that kind of culture and capability aspect to it too, I'd love to hear maybe just 30 seconds, and then we can get into actually talking about the campaign. But how do you think about that part of your role? Is it like a separate bucket in your mind where you need to go there? Or I just love to know how you deliver on that, as well as all the, let's say, typical responsibilities that people associate with the CMO role?
Linda: Yeah, h, it's a great question. To me, when I think about internally, it isn't a separate bucket, I think if, or, you know, nearly 200,000, people aren't invested in thinking about and actually just living the brand. I think the manifestation of that externally, however creative it is, however, original it is, is built on sort of a false foundation. So in many ways, and we'll talk about this as we talk about the purpose, you know, for a company that's nearly 130 years old, there through lines that apply to our, how we operate, how we act, the responsibility we have to each other. And I think that's the the yin to the yang of our external brand, in many ways. So it isn't a separate thing. And it's not a separate consideration. And at the same time, our employees are such an important audience. And they're sort of our first audience, even before we start to talk to customers, investors, partners, future employees.
Eric: Yeah, Great. I'm sure we'll touch on that more as we start to dive deep into the actual campaign. So today, we're talking about your new purpose campaign, what I know came out in 2020, but it's obviously going to be a platform for a while, I would imagine. And there's different extensions of it. So launched in 2020. And now as I understand it, I really liked how I think some of the press I saw around it more recently, was talking about how you're extending the campaign by celebrating GE employees.
So why don't we start at the beginning? The question I always like to ask to kind of kick off these case studies, if you will, is, what is the business problem, slash opportunity you were looking to solve for? When you you know, roll the tape way back? I'm sure if it launched in 2020, you started working on this much earlier, what was the challenge or opportunity that you were going after.
Zara: You know, the business challenge that we were solving was? How articulating the GE of today. You know, when we talked about the GE purpose, it was really just about uncovering the greatness of DNA that is inherent in this brand that's almost 130 years old, but making sure that was positioned for today, and positioned for the future and where future growth was coming from in lockstep with our customers, ever changing needs?
Linda: Yeah, or a cultural spin on that? Because I think that's exactly right. It's, it's our brand purposes is about today. Who is GE today? What's interesting, if you go back, and I certainly can't go all the way back where we're, you know, decades old is there's been a through line at GE, I think, since Thomas Edison, you know, sort of created the company, so to speak, or at least was our was our founder, and that is inventing what the world needs. I'm doing it at scale, which is a wonderful, wonderful privilege to operate in as many countries as we do, and to do it with an eye towards the future while rooted firmly in the present. So there are three things we think about a lot when we think about this purpose of building a world that works. One is around energy, we're very much in the energy space. And so what is the where's the world going visa vie decarbonisation, what we call the energy transition. Second, health is incredibly important, we have a big health business. So the right treatment at the right time, something we call precision health, and then finally the future of sustainable flight. So when you kind of take flight and health and energy things that we worked on back in the day. They all ladder up, if you will, to this idea of how do you build a world that works works for everyone and works in these impactful almost seismic sectors.
Eric: So you know, this must have been a massive undertaking. And you know, a brand like GE the scale that you need to deliver a message like this, but also how much clarity and alignment you need to create internally just to get everybody rowing the boat in the same direction to make something like this happen. I'd love to hear a little bit more of like the nitty gritty of how this came to life. So maybe you can kind of take us through how did you kick it off? How did you align all your partners to kind of come up with the best work? And the best way to tell this story? I'm not sure who wants to take that question. But the how, let's talk about the how.
Zara: Yeah, so I think you know, where we started was on the CEO, Larry Cobbs his his vision, you know, he's very clear around the future of GE, being a much more sort of focused, high tech industrial company. So we started there. And we did before we even went to our agency partners, we did a lot of work internally and externally, internally, with our employees. And not just the CEOs of our companies, not just with senior executives, with our employees, like the GE brand is too big and powerful to just sit in the marketing department. So we went into the belly of the organisation and making sure we're speaking to the people who speak to our customers, because they hold the brand as much as Linda and I do, we then went externally and spoke to our customers to make sure that we were getting a today, live today, perspective on the strengths and opportunities for the GE brand. So that process took a lot of work. It was very human, it took remember, Linda, we were there were so many conversations. And this was pre COVID. So we're able to use when Linder is now in Croton Ville, we're able to use forums at GE when people were coming together to just kind of like hop in at the end of a meeting or at the end of a training session and kind of talk about the GE brand and what it meant in people's own words. And I gotta tell you that that was very special, to be able to do that in a company as big as GE to be able to tap in to what people were really thinking and how they articulated the brand in their own words.
Eric: I love that. Because one of the things that I talk about a lot, you know, brand purpose, literally the purpose campaign of GE, I think that word gets thrown around a lot, and it's very buzzy these days. And I think everybody's scrambling to go find a purpose, but actually, the best. The best marketing, the best brands that are built on purpose are ones that actually come from within. So they start with conversations with employees are actually think of it as like excavating verse constructing, you have to go deep into what's already there, in order to have a purpose. That's true. And that you can actually walk the walk consistently along with the talk that you put out there. So I love that even with one of the biggest, biggest brands in the world. That's how you started this campaign was actually going in, in order to then go out.
Linda: Yeah, it's so well said, Eric, I mean, if I can't imagine, frankly, a brand, sort of casting a net and saying, oh, we need a purpose. What should it be? Versus as you say, excavating? Revealing, right, it's about digging in? And seeing as Laura said it, how do people feel? How do they express themselves? You're not really looking for words, you know, as our and I said this over and over again, as part of this process. It's not up to our employees to come up with the words, it's up to them to share sort of how they feel about the company, why they work here. What matters to them. The word part of it isn't the hard part. It's the excavation, to use your word to really say, what is that DNA when you peel it all back? And it's laborious process, but there's joy in it, I think for a brand like GE because you're kind of hearing these sentiments of pride and deep seated awareness that they're part of something bigger than themselves.
Eric: Yeah
Linda: And then it's kind of a privilege to get to take that and shape the words around it.
Eric: Yep, It's interesting, kind of when you said, you know, people don't go cast in it. I totally agree. And I was trying to, I don't know, maybe get off my high horse for a second. I'm like, of course, people don't go cast in that. But I think I think what happens to us a little bit of a different metaphor, and let me know, if you agree is they don't cast the net, but they go get people to help them figure it out. And so it ends up being it's almost more like, it's the tip of the iceberg. That is the brand purpose. It's the thing that breaks through the surface that people see. But actually, it's just the tippy top of a much larger thing underneath. And I think a lot of people aren't focused on figuring out what's underneath. They're just trying to figure out that like, sexy, exciting thing on the top. So maybe maybe I need to switch my metaphor a little bit. But that's kind of how I think about it is I'm sure there was 10 times as much work that went into figuring out what was actually true to level up to the surface for this as there was to making it come to life externally.
Linda: Zara and I've talked about this so many times on is the we did all the work. We like the words, we think they're very expressive of who GE is. But what we are sure of is that it's resonant because it is used internally. So often. So I would say for every, you know, piece of content or ad or video that Zara and the team have worked on there probably 10x, the number of times it's mentioned in an earnings script, a town hall, on casually amongst people, and I can promise you, that isn't scripted from us, it's coming from within. And I think in many ways, I mean, see, tell me if you, if you feel the same way, that's the most validating part of all, is we may have had the opportunity to extract and, you know, form the words around it. But it's resonating so deeply, because we're hearing it parroted back in new and fresh ways. When I presume you.
Zara: You know, I came from CPG. So, brand management is a is a process. And I remember creating this chart with a triangle on you know, how you're meant to use the purpose, right? And then just to see everyone, innately just use it that as Linda saying, and in trade shows, it's like, I never had to show that chart. It's just people know, GE, and they know what this means our purpose building a world that works. And they know how to use it. And that's great. I think the you know, the other thing that happened there it was COVID. And so we actually had a plan on you know, how we were going to launch purpose, remember that it was an Olympics opening ceremony 2020. That didn't happen. But you know, when we knew we'd got it right is when the purpose just it took life, you know, the long hand of our purposes, we rise to the challenge of building a world that works. And oh, my so proud to see our frontline teams rise to that challenge. There was nothing that came from the marketing team. At that point, the marketing team was trying to catch up to the great work that was happening around the world in terms of, you know, just all of the efforts into ventilation production and the partnership with Ford. And just stories about there was an accountant in that healthcare division who just flipped his day job to be a second shift janitor, because he just wanted to be on the frontline, you know, and that was sort of wiping down all the doors and cleaning all the communal areas, keeping them sort of sanitised. That's what we mean of, you know, kind of rising to the challenge. The whole company, lifted its head and stepped up. And that was amazing to see.
Eric: So I'm super curious. Because even though I've, you know, Linda, we worked together for a while I've worked with people like Dean, like very, very big brands. I'm really curious, as we're talking about this, maybe another level to the question. When you get to the frontline employees, what is the perception of your team within that group? Like? Do they even know you exist? Like, do they have a perspective on marketing? I'm super curious how you start those conversations, because I'm sure a lot of people really resonate with that. But I'm also sure there were a lot of people watch. I don't know, but were there some people who were like, yeah, it's brand campaign, you know, I don't know, I just do this job. Like, how do you how do you relate to those people?
Linda: You know, you've worked with so many companies, Eric, and you know, we all we all have in past lives. GE is not a marketing company. The way I don't know, Pepsi, let's say is we're an engineering company. First and foremost, we make things, we we make really big things, you know, biggest tallest wind turbines in the world and gas turbines and MRI machines, etc. So you know, unlike I suspect, places where Zara has worked like a Bacardi where there is that be to say, you know, b2b is a different animal, and I'll sort of sidelined for a moment. Because when you think about b2b, you don't necessarily always think about marketing first. And yet the decisions that our customers are making often or if not lifetime decisions, their 10 year decisions, you're not buying a bottle of wine or Coca Cola, you're buying a gas turbine that's going to be in place for 30 years. So these are really big decisions. I start there, because in the conversations that we have had, and continue to have with our, you know, our our frontline employees, and you know, frankly, all the way up and down the line on, I would say, What unites people at GE, is this enormous sense of pride in work. enormous sense. And I don't think Zara and I ever really talked about, okay, we need your help on a marketing campaign. If I don't, I literally don't remember ever using those words. I know you didn't say, I think it was, you know, as we think about GE today and tomorrow, and we want to express ourselves to the world. Help us what's what do you love about the company? I think that was one of the questions we asked, What do you love about the company? What gets you up in the morning? You know, what do you tell your friends and family? And, you know, perhaps some of that is because of the type of company we are. But honestly, if I were in a different kind of company, I think I'd still start there. You know, what, what is it that you feel about this company that we want to try to bring forward in marketing marketing, to me is the best expression of who you really are, you know, it's not lipstick on a pig or anything like that. It's it's, it's that reveal of, you know, your, your, hopefully your, you know, your best self in a very human way, as Zara said earlier, so, I've never felt sean, did you see? Did you feel like, you know, get out of here, you brand person, you know,
Zara: No, not at all, You know, I think Linda mentioned this earlier, you know, you we really start with the business priorities, which, for us, the energy transition, precision health, future flight, and then the marketing team. And I agree with Linda, we never go in with a marketing campaign. But excuse the pun with a jet fuel on top, you know, and we helped bring that to life in kind of the most emotive way possible. But we're definitely in lockstep with our partners in the businesses in terms of their customers, as well, as Linda was talking about the employee pride, like what it feels like to walk into a client meeting a customer meeting is GE And our role is to help bring that to life.
Linda: You know, Eric, one other thought I'd maybe it's useful depending on, you know, the types of companies people who are listening work for, but you know, we also have some very strong businesses within GE. So our healthcare business is really focused on helping their patients in moments that matter, our aviation businesses focused on bringing people home safely. Our energy businesses are very much focused on unleashing the power of energy. So we were trying, in the purpose work, we're talking about not to sit on, sit on top of and squelch any of that, but rather be a foundation with which each of our businesses could be rooted but but also sore, if that makes sense.
Eric: Yep. Makes sense. Cool. That's really interesting to hear you talk about that. Because I think I think everybody you know, if you are a full time marketer, you are in a company that is more than full time marketers, therefore, you have to find a way, not just relate. But actually I think that the relationship and finding an effective way to help people understand that the work you do, producing the jet fuel to drive the growth of the business is relevant and helpful to them. I think so much of it, you know, the culture piece that you talked about at the beginning, Linda, so much of it comes down to communication, alignment, you know, so much of our responsibilities as marketers, and what determines whether or not we're successful, it's actually the people skills of being able to communicate with the people we work with. Because the best brand stories, whether you're a GE, or whether you're a 50 person, medium sized business here in the UK, it comes down to telling an authentic story that has to come from the people and the product.
Linda: You know, Eric, as I listened to you, I think about toward the, you know, as you heard us say, tonnes of feedback from people all over the company, on the alignment piece. We'll just touch on this quickly on it was quite important to us that our colleagues in investor relations and finance and HR and you know, the like, also could find themselves in this purpose. You know what I mean? We were accompany, as most are with multiple stakeholders And if this were only going to work for, you know, a slice of the pie in terms of our audiences, it wasn't going to work. You know, I think that's where we are. And I always use the word, purpose. We never think of this as a tagline. We never think of this as a campaign, simply because that's fleeting, and not necessarily holistic. So I do think that alignment of cross your the teams internally, super important.
Eric: Yeah, So kind of an extension of that. But more focused on the communication and alignment of actually managing the processes are, this is probably a question for you. I'm super curious how you approached and managed the agency and partner sandbox as part of this, because you I've worked as part of that team for GE, and on the agency side, with many other clients. And I'm like, that can be tricky on the client side for something as big and important as this. So how did you approach and I'm just thinking of the people listening, whether they're working with, you know, some of the biggest and best agencies in the world as you were, or just a couple of partners that they need to make sure work well together for the effectiveness of their campaign. How did you approach that? And are there any kind of lessons learned, whether it's from that or from your time in past roles that you can share?
Zara: Yeah, sure. I think, you know, the culture of ge, ge is a very collaborative culture, the answer never sits in one person's head. It's very, you work across lots of different functions, lots of different businesses, and thinking, you know, when it comes to energy transition, that is across a multitude of different businesses, and there's no one silver bullet, and we try to bring that culture into our agencies as well. So just like our purpose is too big to just sit in the marketing department, it's too big to sit in any one agency. So we don't have lead agencies, it really is integrated and holistic as as, as Linda was saying about GE. And I think, sort of my job is to manage that. Sometimes there's tension, but you have to make that a positive tension. Because we want to get the best out of our agencies, we want all agencies to thrive, we want genuinely the best ideas, we want creativity to thrive. And, you know, that has been sort of more challenging through COVID, where you're doing it virtually. But at the same time, I gotta tell you, it's in some ways, it's been brilliant, because I've had a more diverse teams come on, and the performative aspect of the client creative meeting is completely gone. So it's much more open, much more collaborative, I've got loads of people on calls, and people that, you know, I grew up in agency side, so I didn't think I made it into a client meeting till at least I was, you know, direct write anything before that I was just bringing in the, the tea and coffees show that's changed now. But I'm seeing, you know, a kind of more diverse and younger group of on the agency side, because even if you're not presenting, you can certainly listen in and I love bringing that in. And I love few fueling that, you know, and she, and the ideas are in a better place because of that openness, that has come through this hybrid way of working.
Eric: So Linda, I want to ask you a question building on that. And I think you know, it's coming because we both smiled when Zara said the word tension. So, you know, I love and for people listening in the show notes will include a link to a video that Linda did for the future of storytelling.org that I think is really interesting. I had to remind her what she said, but eight rules of branding. And the first was about healthy tension. And talking about how we just found my notes here. Consensus isn't good for creativity, you need to have that healthy tension in order to come up with better and more breakthrough ideas. So, Linda, I'd love for you to elaborate on that. Because I think that's something that everybody can learn from and apply to what they do.
Linda: Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the reminder. I'll go back and watch the video myself. Really good. It's so it's always fun to know that like you hit the mark once in a while. So I'd say a couple things. I have the highest regard for the creative process. To me. There's magic, there's alchemy. That happens, but I don't think it just happens with white sheets of paper and people sitting around a table with you know, m&ms and you know, a couple beers, what have you, I think the best creativity comes from a few things constrained to me is always critical. If you don't have the constraint of I mean, Eric, you you said this at the beginning, you know, what problem are you trying to solve? Right? You can't open the aperture to widely. I have always embraced tension. And I don't know if this is an oldest of four girls kind of thing. I don't know where it comes from. But I think without healthy challenge, debate, you wind up in a safe space. And for a very big company that is well known. GE is a company that you don't have to explain to people, gee, let me tell you who we are. Playing it safe. Playing it overly safe, can actually result in the opposite of what we're looking for. We want to show up in a way that's a bit unexpected, because you do know us so well. So figuring out how to have a little bit of sandpaper, while we are thinking through how we're showing up what we're saying, you know, the type of people that are commenting on, you know, in a different campaign, I think tension can be incredibly important. By tension. I don't mean fisticuffs, I don't mean people throwing bottles at each other. I'm a respect to me is everything. Kindness is everything. Maybe we learned that from the same person? Eric, maybe we didn't, who knows? But I think it is that ability to disagree and commit, as I think Jeff Bezos has said, amongst others, that I think is everything and particularly on the creative side.
Eric: So for someone listening, who agrees with you, in theory, but in practice, wants to introduce the right because I totally agree, like it's, you need to do it the right way. How can they introduce a little bit of sandpaper? I really like that metaphor. How can they like what would your advice based on not just this process, but all the years of experience you have bringing that healthy tension to your partners and your teams, the work you do, or some of the lessons or recommendations you'd give to people?
Linda: I mean, these are my lessons, I'm sure, you know, people listening will will have have their own thoughts. I think having people that have markedly different points of view is critical is our talked about diversity on a team. This is all kinds of diversity, but the perspective from where you come, be it you know, having people on the team who have worked on completely different types of brands, different points of view, in terms of life experience, in terms of generation, in terms of global versus local, you know, somebody who is coming out of perspective, from the Middle East may look at things quite differently than, you know, one of us that grew up in North America, on different agencies, Eric, you know, this, we set a round table. And we really do set a round table. And folks don't always agree, there's a little bit of healthy competition, again, not a terrible thing, if it's coming from the right place. But that doesn't happen by accident. If you don't, if you aren't deliberate with who's in the room, introverts and extroverts are another way to think about this, you know, the people who will just speak versus the folks who will kind of hold back but then say, you know, I just I actually have a different point of view. But I don't know if this is helpful or not. Once upon a time, you know, you think about like dinner parties, like inviting a - you know, different group of people?
Eric: I think it is because I think also with things like this. And, you know, I really want the conversations on this podcast, much like this one to be very actionable. And like, okay, what can I learn from the CMO and head of marketing or Head of Brand at GE? What can I learn and apply? I want it to be very actionable. And sometimes I think everybody's looking for hacks. Like, what's that thing? What's that thing? I haven't thought of that I can just go to easily tomorrow. But actually, the thing that's going to make the most difference is doing the things that matter well, and thoroughly. So just like I mean, you said at the very beginning, Zahra diversity in your team, whether it's internally or externally, like, that's the biggest and best thing you can do, and it's hard. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, taking the shortcuts, trying to find those kind of Bite Size things that you can easily do isn't going to lead to the best results. It's doing those harder things, but the ones that are going to have a bigger impact.
Zara: I think that's right, Eric, another thing that we do actually spearheaded, through Linda, is just this how do you create a sense of restlessness, you know, and that ideas are always on we actually have an always on brief, you know, and it's open to everyone with thewhether you've been an agency partner for 100 years, or you just joined, whether you have a small piece of business, or in a niche, part of our marketing mix, or you have a broad piece of business, everybody has access to this brief, everybody has access to Linda and I to just pitch ideas, and they can be completely out of your sandbox. But I think it's really important for clients to mirror the behaviour, you want to see. So create that sense of restlessness that we're always thinking, you know, what's culturally relevant? What's an idea? That's right, but you know, right now, not just the kind of year yearly brief that comes out once a year. And then Linda, and I model it in our own behaviour as well, we don't always agree, you know, we're, and that's, that's also a positive, you know, I think it's, you know, kind of telling that she brought in somebody from who had, you know, flavoured rum experience into high tech, industrial manufacturing, you know, it kind of shows, you know, the pluses, the, you know, this sort of latency of, of ideas and where they can come from,
Eric: What does the internal open brief look like? Because I love that idea. We used to have something similar at Vayner. And I actually recommended to a lot of the clients that I talked to, but oftentimes, it's more of an internal thing, of, hey, there's so much creativity and diversity of perspective, within just the people you have in your business, whether it's 50 people, 500 people, or 200,000, people find a way to give them an opportunity to put those ideas on the table if you have them. So very tactically, what does that look like? Is it a email that people send ideas?
Zara: Or how do you actually kind of catalyse and then collect those ideas? Yeah, so we've had to probably formalise it more through COVID. Because we're not, you know, we don't have people coming in and out of our offices. So it's an actually, it's a written brief. In a nutshell, it's, you know, for a brand like GE, whose purpose is building a world that works, how does that brand behave? And what are the new and relevant ways that we behave when we're in Build Mode, which is the way we operate at GE. And then, you know, the formal how we come together, as we have probably like four times a year will come on a big suit, like it's a huge do, I have to add an extra, like, 20 minutes just for intros, but and then you know, Linda always starts and ends a meeting with and our doors always open. And our agencies use that. And they knock on it, and so are different agencies and have different processes within their own kind of organisations. But they all kind of spark off of that.
Eric: Amazing. So we're running out of time, which I'm disappointed by, because I feel like I only got through half of the questions that I wanted to ask you, but I so some of the things that I think people can either go see how you've talked about it in other places. And we'll include in the show notes, some of the research that we did, where you talk about some of these things that I think will be really helpful for people. So Linda, you've been on the record in that eight, you know, eight pillars video, but also many times over the years on how important it is to be humanised. As a brand. I think it's really interesting in this campaign, especially how you've done that. So I'm sorry, we didn't get to talk too much about it. One thing I will call out that we will include in the show notes. I love the video of the flight test pilot, that you did as part of the kind of purpose campaign and showing the frontline employees. I thought that was really cool. So include that in there. And then Zara, I'm sorry, we didn't get to talk about and I would have loved to hear more about your perspective on creativity and how that helps people kind of capture the next generation understand what they care about, where they're consuming content, etc. But what I would love to use the last three minutes on is, over the course of this campaign, what have been some of the biggest lessons learned that you can share with our audience, it could be on anything on how you kicked it off and how you ran the process and how you delivered the work on how you surface the results. If you look back on it and say, hey, here was the biggest or two of the biggest things that I learned that I think any marketer could learn from, what what would those be and what would you like to share?
Zara: I think for me, and this is probably COVID related because of when we kind of launched our purpose, just how human the GE branders is, and I do think this is true of b2b brands as they are built by humans. then built by your frontline workers, you know, we have elongated sales cycles of sort of 10 plus years. And so the brand is too big just to sit within in any one department. And when you kind of understand that, and let it go, as Queen Elsa would say, what you get back in terms of inputs that you can then shine the light on from a marketing perspective is just so rich. And you can see that in some of the work in the next engineers programme and what campaign we're running at the moment for breast cancer awareness that is really around Pristina our mammography product, which was built by women, for women, you know, we didn't have to make that up. That is definitely not a tagline that is just what we do just a very human brand that we have the privilege of stewarding.
Linda: Hard to top that I the word that comes to mind is elasticity. And, you know, Eric, earlier in the podcast, we talked about the amount of work we put into, hopefully mine the insights. And I think the payoff now, and it's early days still 2020 I mean, my God, you know, this is a long lasting idea. The fact that this purpose, building a world that works is so as I just gave you a bunch of examples, is so relevant, not just in the bricks, but in the mortar of what we do. I feel like the the, we're in some ways in the early stages of that. But with each new project challenge, a product, you kind of see how this spins in a in a really good way. But I don't think we would have gotten here, had we not done the upfront, like, you know, almost door to door, so to speak, to pull these insights out. But having done that, it's well worth it. Because it's got such a oh god, so much so much elasticity to it.
Eric: There's no shortcuts for the things that really matter, right?
Linda: They're not really
Eric: Amazing. All right, well, I'm sorry that well, at least to me, this felt very short. Maybe we'll do a round to employ. But Linda Zara, thank you so much for making the time. I really appreciate you coming on board. So we're going to include everything in the notes. And we'll have a lot of information about the campaign. Is there anything in particular that you want to point people to where let's say they're only going to check out one thing? What would that be?
Zara: I was gonna say on next engineers initiative that we just launched thing. We literally just launched it last week, Eric, so it'll be a great place to showcase it.
Linda Yeah. I love that. It's all about the future.
Eric All right. Thank you so much. Really good to see you as ours. So great to meet you. Thank you both again.
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Eric: All right. For today's episode, I am really excited to feature Molly Johnson Jones, who's the co founder and CEO of Flexa. And the great work that they're doing. So Molly, we've known each other for a little bit work together a bit at 11 Fs. But it's been amazing watching what you built with Flex. And I know it's still early, and I think there's so many more people in organisations, you can help an impact you can have were, of course, flexfiled as rival. But what do you tell our audience a bit about flex? Or why you started it? And what's the vision that you have for it?
Molly: Yeah, thank you for such a lovely intro there. So flexa it is a talent attraction and employer brand platform. But I guess what does that actually mean? Well, we verify companies as being truly flexible, so flexible on vacation, or hours or benefits, you know, dog friendliness work from anywhere schemes, unlimited annual leave all the things that people really care about when they're looking for a new role. But there's absolutely nowhere to go to find out that information. So we get companies discovered by the hundreds of 1000s of people that are looking for different types of flexibility in the working environment. And from the user side, you come on to flexure, you put in your filters, you know, you want to dog friendly office, you want to find a marketing role or an agency to work for. And you want to go into the office two days a week, and you put all those filters on. And what throws up on the search is all of those open roles and all of those companies that will meet that criteria. So it's bringing true transparency to the job hunting process globally as well, because it's obviously not just relevant to one geography anymore. People can move around, they can travel, the future of work is much more fluid and we are facilitating that future of work by providing transparency.
Eric: Amazing. Yeah. And I think there's the, you know, the service that you provide on both sides of the platform for people looking for flexible roles and for employers that are offering flexible employment, but I think there's also the conversation that you're pushing. And I know you, you know, individually and everybody should go follow follow Molly on LinkedIn, because he has a lot of great things to say on this topic. But I think flex as a brand is really pushing that envelope, which of course, is incredibly current and needed right now. So thanks for doing that. So, quick tab. Molly, obviously, we'll have to, we'll have to catch up for a longer period of time next time. But where can people find out more about Flexa if they're looking for remote roles, or if they're an employer that wants to get verified as a flexible place.
Molly: So we'll just jump on our website is flexa.careers snd for companies click on the companies tab. And for users, you can browse jobs and browse companies pretty easily. And for companies, there's a very quick and easy little quiz that you can do to find out if you're offering what candidates actually want and you can find that on that website as well.
Eric: Great, thanks so much Molly.
Eric: Scratch is a production of rival. We are a marketing innovation consultancy that helps businesses develop strategies and capabilities to grow faster. If you want to learn more about us check out we are rivals.com If you want to connect with me, email me at Eric at we are rivals.com or find me on LinkedIn. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, share with anyone you think might enjoy it. And please do leave us a review. Thanks for listening and see you next week.
