Firefox compatible.

Client: General Electric Co.
Creative Agency: Atmosphere BBDO

The business objective for this campaign was three-fold:

• To launch ecomagination, GE’s initiative to aggressively bring to market new technologies that will help customers meet pressing environmental challenges.
• To leverage ecomagination as a pillar supporting the overarching brand platform, imagination at work.
• To showcase tangible examples of GE’s ecomagination to provide relevant, understandable proof of GE’s ability to fulfill this commitment.

The ideas for the online ads came from information provided by the client during product briefings. One goal of the briefing was to show how GE’s products would change the world, and to make certain that the explanation would be understood by consumers. Further, the client believes in the strategic use of cutting-edge technology and in the need for consumer-brand involvement. As a result, we were able to continue the use of advanced rich media technologies to create interactive ad units that entice the user to interact, with the reward of more information.

The consumer-brand involvement with the online ads have surpassed all expectations we had for the campaign. The interaction rates and time spent interacting with the online ads have exceeded by 300 percent the benchmarks set by past campaigns. 

In the future, we would love the opportunity for sites to provide greater k-size; thereby allowing us the ability to include more interactivity within each ad unit.
-- Liz Poss, account director, Atmosphere BBDO

This simple rich media banner for GE accomplishes much with a minimum of fuss. The ad actually is broken down into two phases. Phase one starts with the GE logo and tagline, and dissolves into a clever visual: an animated flock of birds forming into the shape of an airplane. This is accompanied by the text “The GEnx jet engine -- built because we all share the air.” Phase two continues with a slight reveal of cars in traffic behind the GE engine and the prompt to “roll over for more.” Upon rollover, the mouse becomes a car zapper, eliminating cars from the banner to reveal the environmental pay-off: basically that the CO2 emission reductions from its new jet engines would equate to 800,000 fewer cars on the road.

The ad is cute, if not overly inspired, and accomplishes each of the three standard level objectives for rich media advertising: engagement, interaction and reward. The opening animation is clean and catches your eye, the phase two ‘car zapper’ provides a bit of interactivity, and the environmental punch line pay-off acts as the reward layer (as does a visit to the Ecomagination website, which provides an even richer experience than the ad). It may not win any awards, but as a simple rich media execution, this banner does a lot right.
-- Jason Scheidt, director of marketing, EyeWonder, Inc.

What a nice little ad.  It draws you in, requires some interaction, but gets the initial message across quickly. I especially like how you “eliminate the cars” to reveal the final support point. Nice touch. 

Although it isn’t abundantly clear that there is a second half to this ad, the agency has done a good job of getting the primary copy points upfront, so those who do not interact still leave with the message.

I think the beauty of this campaign happens after the click. I do really like what they’ve done here with the Ecomagination microsite. The agency found a way to take less-than-exciting subject matter and present it in a very engaging and interactive way. This site could easily have been a run-of-the-mill white paper site, loaded with text. It is nice to see that GE took the next step to include video to engage the user and humanize the data.

I think we will see a lot of information-driven sites presented this way in the near future.
-- Daniel Stein, managing director, EVB, Inc.