GE China’s Director of Brand & Communications Li Guowei: Three Things That B2B Brands Need To Do and Do Well

At the recently held 2014 PR Newswire Summit, GE China Director of Brands & Communications Li Guowei (known by his colleagues as “brother-in-law Li”), shared an analysis of the predicament and challenges around branding that is confronting multinational corporations. With examples from GE China’s corporate communications efforts, he also talked about the transformative opportunities at multinational corporations with B2B businesses, shedding light on the possibility of reshaping the future for multinational corporations in transformation.

Two challenges confronting multinational corporations

Among Interbrand’s list of the world’s most valuable brands is GE’s iconic blue logo. As an established veteran with ten years of experience in corporate communications at GE, Li admitted that even multinational corporations that are in the list face two major issues in the rapidly evolving local media environment.

1. Differentiation of media platforms. TV, print media and online portals used to take a dominant position in public opinion and were used by PR personnel for communications. But now social media has taken the leading position in this fragmented mobile & social media environment. In this respect, local brands are gradually outpacing multinational brands. That’s why media often says: “It is more difficult for multinational corporations to operate in China.”
2. Changes in preferences among talented job seekers. Multinational corporations used to be the preferred choice for job seekers, but now they are faced with a declined reputation crisis. HR departments are often encountered with hiring challenges, whereas the talent they want to hire prefer local players such as Alibaba or Tencent.

Furthermore, judging from a string of events such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerman’s recent China visit and the successive visits by Apple’s CEOs, the government holds a clear and definite attitude toward media and the internet — they expect the internet industry to play a significant role in creating wealth for society and bringing about profound social reform.

In view of the current situation, Li held that, when working on brand communications, it will no longer be compelling to merely resort to slogans like “We are the world’s largest conglomerate; we are the world’s largest aircraft engines manufacturer; we are the world’s largest manufacturer of generators” since such traditional means of story-telling and brand building are no longer inspiring and unable to draw people’s attention in the internet age. Then, how to tell the story of the enterprise?

Each enterprise has its own advantages. In GE’s branding, the advantages include:

• Top management regards GE as a reliable partner
• The firm has a technological edge
• It enjoys a good reputation in mainstream media and has begun to exert influence in social media channels
• It has a global advantage in leadership and talent development

The corresponding challenges, on the other hand include:

•  GE lacks a powerful localized image
•  Multinational corporations have communication deficiencies in  terms of their comprehensive advantages
•  The communication channels of target customers are decentralized
•  It is difficult for multinational corporations to hire and retain  employees

Faced with these advantages and challenges, Li emphasized, it is a good vantage point and an opportunity for transformation to think about what influence the enterprise can have on society instead of just focusing on the product’s features when working on corporate communications. With this in mind, GE set its transformative action steps in China:

• changes its corporate positioning, from “global” enterprise to “global+local” enterprise
• changes its audience recognition, from large enterprise represented by “Welch” to innovative industry leader
• changes its marketing approaches, from product-oriented activities to 360 degree strategies
• changes its communication approaches, from messages from top management to multi-dimensional communications of “leader+staff+advocate” so as to energize the entire workforce, encourage employees who like you to speak out and through word-of-mouth.

Three things that B2B brands need to do well

Finally, using GE’s own communications efforts as a case study, Li Guowei shared its transformation practice in three aspects with B2B multinational corporations.

1.  Be the thought leader

Li cited the example of GE’s hosting “The future of energy” forum in Beijing. The reason why enterprises dare to initiate such a topic, he explained, is that they have fully participated in the mining and transportation of natural gas, various means of power generation and play a highly influential role in the energy sector. As such, when discussing topics such as “What is the future of energy’, “Where should investments be made” or “In what areas would GE like to cooperate with the Chinese government and Chinese enterprises” , GE could attract majority’s attention of the industry.

In addition, GE has another innovative idea, namely, “The next age is the era of the industrial internet”. Big Data collected from areas such as e-commerce and social management can be applied to manufacturers of large pieces of equipment. Equipment such as aircraft engines, generators and MRI machines generate large amounts of data every second, which, if collected and analyzed, would greatly improve social productivity. In short, it can reduce unscheduled downtime for the clients of B2B enterprises. Take medical CT for example. Chinese CT physicians might have to scan the images of hundreds of patients every day. A breakdown of the scanner at an inopportune moment would be a great loss of productivity for the hospital. However, with big data analysis, it becomes infinitely easier to know when to replace equipment parts. GE is the first enterprise in the world to put forward such an idea, which might facilitate its leading role in the industry as well as create business opportunities for the firm. As the GE tagline puts it, “We speak the language of the industry”, the idea of an “industrial internet” is an important means of GE corporate communication.

2.  To do well in content distribution

Li believes that every company is a media company. However today’s B2B players all still share a major misconception in terms of content creation—despite the large number of digital companies creating content for enterprises, the truly competent content creators are in media, and they are the ones with the skills to create great content. How should enterprises avoid minefields surrounding policies and ethics while synthesizing the quality resources and organize them in a way that is rational, effective and lawful, in order to produce content when it comes to news releases, social media, performance statistics and video? These are questions well worth consideration.

3. To build employer brand

GE’s employer brand is “Sharing a belief, Making it real”. Li expressed the opinion that, employer brand can help employees have the right attitude towards their own employer and feel a sense of pride in their employer through various means of brand building (brand analysis, social investigation, etc). GE put in place such practices in building the “employer brand”, including “GE career journey”, “workplace coach”, “workplace mentor”, “parents club”, to name just a few, bringing together a group of people who share the same values and are committed to creating value for the society. Promotions and social media are good means of communication for disseminating such stories and building employer brand.

How to solve ROI?

In another topic at the forum “How should B2B enterprises handle PR communication and ROI”, Li expressed his view of ROI with a witty metaphor: For example, can you successfully court a woman by just treating her to dinner? If the two of you end up by getting married, can you say it was simply because of that meal? So, communication is a long process. Don’t mislead your boss in focusing on one event or advertisement campaign that had persuaded the customer into make the buying decision. The truth is, the fewer marketing campaigns you undertake or the fewer marketing efforts you make, the more difficult a situation you are plunging you and your boss into. You will be forced by your boss to undertake three campaigns a year to tell which one is the one that helps you get your girl.

Li Guowei revealed some of his in-depth thinking after the conference. For relevant reading: B2B Enterprise Should Enhance Brand Value by Impact (in Simplified Chinese) – http://www.prnasia.com/blog/archives/10313

Translation based on the original Chinese post abstracted from Li Guowei’s Chinese speech at “2014 PR Newswire Summit”, first edited & shared by PR Newswire’s Coco Qi, Assistant Manager, Multimedia Services  – http://www.prnasia.com/blog/archives/10309. 

This is an original article by PR Newswire. To reprint, please indicate the source and provide the link.