Q&A: GE Managing Editor Tomas Kellner
Monday, July 29, 2013
From this interesting interview at The Content Strategist:
GE is one of the brands out there that’s done content really well. Do you think that’s because the topics are inherently interesting, or is it an internal attitude that allows the content to shine? What do you think?
What GE does is interesting – that helps. But the culture inside the company is becoming hugely focused on storytelling. We have a CMO and CCO who have pushed us to focus on creating strong content and finding interesting ways to tell our story. Another colleague and I have been traveling around the company and holding writing workshops for our communicators. We teach storytelling – how do you put together an interesting narrative, like something you would read in a newspaper or a magazine. Now you have a chance to write the story yourself, so do it right.
What’s success look like?
The ultimate goal is to retire the press release. It’s a great holder for facts, but you’d never want to read one. We want to tell stories.
As I’ve mentioned in client presentations and conversations more than a few times, GE’s been doing a great job with storytelling in recent years (GE Reports, GE on Tumblr, Txchnologist, and more).