Company: GE, New York, NY
Entry Submitted By: VaynerMedia
Company Description: GE works on things that matter. The best people and the best technologies taking on the toughest challenges. Finding solutions in energy, health and home, transportation and finance. Building, powering, moving and curing the world. Not just imagining. Doing. GE works.
Nomination Category: Marketing Campaign Categories - Specialty
Nomination Sub Category: Brand Experience of the Year - Consumer

Nomination Title: #6SecondScience Fair

Tell the story of this nominated brand experience program for the judges (up to 525 words). Describe the genesis, planning, execution, and results to date of your campaign. If applicable, remember to describe what's unique or innovative about your program:

In August 2013, GE hosted the world's first #6SecondScience Fair, a week-long celebration of science on the emerging social media platform Vine. The campaign was born from one simple DIY vine experiment featuring milk, soap, and food coloring. The post went viral and became one of the most successful vines posted by any brand in platform history, garnering over 418k total organic engagements (likes, comments, and revines) on Vine, more than 31k link shares to Facebook and Twitter, and a slew of subsequent copycat experiments. We saw a bigger opportunity here. The nature of the mobile-only platform was perfect for driving user-generated content, so we launched the world's first #6SecondScience Fair.

GE’s overarching goal is to be the most innovative company in the world, which includes how the brand approaches marketing. The objective of the #6SecondScience Fair was to emphasize GE’s dedication to science of all shapes and sizes, while further positioning the brand as a first-mover and early adopter of emerging platforms. Moreover, we sought to activate young people to demonstrate their own enthusiasm for science and technology.

#6SecondScience Fair was brought to life through micro-content across all of GE’s major social media channels. On Facebook, we employed a complete takeover strategy and devoted all content to the campaign for the week. On Tumblr, we collected and re-blogged the best user-submitted experiments on a custom page. Twitter allowed us to share vines that would play automatically in stream and drive use of the campaign hashtag.

On Pinterest, we created long-form pins with step-by-step instructions for how to replicate the most popular Vine science experiments. YouTube was used to house a recap video featuring the best submissions from the week. Finally, we partnered with BuzzFeed and Mashable to create native, sponsored content that would draw in new and receptive audiences. To scale the campaign quickly, we also identified and partnered with Vine’s top celebrities to seed inspirational content, among the first of any brand on the platform.

By the end of the campaign, more than 600 user-generated #6SecondScience videos had been submitted, and GE's Vine account had added 40k followers, an increase of 281%. The Tumblr gallery received nearly 7k unique visitors who stayed on-site for an average of 2.5 minutes. The YouTube video recapping the campaign has garnered more than 800k views alone, and the campaign’s success led to nearly 50 unique pieces of earned media, including The Atlantic, The Telegraph, Ad Age, and CNET. Best of all, the hashtag is still being used to this day (7.4k mentions to date), proving #6SecondScience was a huge win, both for GE and its target audience.

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2. Provide a brief biography of the leader of the team that planned and executed this marketing campaign (up to 125 words):

Linda Boff, Executive Director, Global Brand Marketing, is responsible for GE’s global advertising and digital marketing along with the company’s brand and design strategy.

Previously, Boff was CMO of iVillage Properties, part of NBC Universal. She joined GE in early 2004 with 18 years of experience in marketing, advertising and communications, including senior roles at Citigroup, the American Museum of Natural History and Porter Novelli.

In 2012, Boff was named B2B Magazine’s Digital Marketer of Year. She has since been a frequent speaker at digital and social media industry events.

She earned a BA in Political Science and Psychology from Union College and lives in Irvington, NY with her husband and two children.