Exploring General Electric with Google Earth

Company: General ElectricTrend: The Integrated-Channel AproachSubject: CSR

What do you see?

General Electric, as many other companies, is finding ways to mitigate its own environmental impact and help others to do so by finding innovative solutions. One of GE’s goals is to reduce its own water use by 20% in 2012.

GE’s website contains a special section on its water reduction programme, including a ‘Water Explorer’. Visitors can install the Water Explorer to see GE’s projects directly in Google Earth. The user downloads the application, starts Google Maps and then flies around the world to explore all GE’s water reduction initiatives.

Why is it effective?

Corporate stakeholders use many other websites and online applications other than the company’s corporate website. Google Maps, for example, is the third-most popular Google application. In February 2008, 350 million ‘copies’ of Google Earth had been installed, which equals around a quarter of the worldwide internet population.

By combining factual and often rather static corporate information with popular and appealing applications, GE has created a major breakthrough in online corporate communications. Presenting information in the natural habitat of internet users increases the probability that they will actually digest the information. And this will undoubtedly contribute to a greater understanding of GE’s water projects.

What’s next?

Companies should take into account that stakeholders do not only visit corporate websites, but actually see and use a host of other websites, applications and online (social) media. So, why not spread the message in such a way that it resembles the user’s preferred way of consuming online information? Within a few years, we will see corporations displaying all their operations on Google Earth and disclosing information on YouTube, Flickr and many other popular sites.