Two marketing skills that matter the most to GE

February 9th, 2007 Lois Kelly Posted in Marketing trends, Smart company stories |

General Electric values these two marketing competencies over all others, according to CMO Dan Henson, who spoke this week at the CMO 2007 conference:

1. Segmentation, particularly down to very granular level.

2. Ethnography. Helps in finding innovative ideas, fueling GE’s “Imagination at work” focus.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • E-mail this story to a friend!
  • Print this article!
  • TwitThis
  • Reddit
  • bodytext
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • StumbleUpon
  • NewsVine
  • Live

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button
-->

3 Responses to “Two marketing skills that matter the most to GE”

  1. Mukund Mohan Says:
    February 9th, 2007 at 6:00 pm

    If you attended this conference, can you please share more about what he meant about ethnography?
    Mukund

  2. Lois Kelly Says:
    February 11th, 2007 at 4:52 pm

    Mukund,

    I think Henson was referring to the social research practice of thenography where researchers go into to the field to study how people live and work to get deeper insights into how those people are using products — and how the products could be improved.  This video of Jane Fulton Suri of IDEO, speaking at the BIF2 Collaboraitve Innovation Summit last October is a wonderful view of what ethnography is and why businesses — like GE — value it so much.
    Lois

  3. Mukund Mohan Says:
    February 11th, 2007 at 10:24 pm

    Thanks Lois. Great blog BTW.

Leave a Reply

« Nortel CMO on the 21st Century Marketing Executive
Can Segolene Royal win on listening and involving people? »