Marketing The Benefit Of Choice For General Electric

How on earth could my direct response expertise from 1996 benefit you today?

In myriad ways, because despite the latest polemics for the latest modus operandi touted by the latest graduating class of automated inbound marketing technophiles, getting measurable business return from your marketing investment still comes down to intelligent strategies, breakthrough concepts and well-crafted content.

There’s lots of algorithm pleasing, cookie cutter and well measured crap out there today that does nothing to generate sales or build your brand. I am not an extruder of that crap.

I am an experienced, proven and strategically grounded creative who knows how to craft content for any new school context-mobile, digital, social, or events as well as old school context. I also know how to engage with people in online communities and in person. And I’ve worked on building some sizable brands.

Helping GE Make The Move To Managed Health Care

In 1996, corporate-provided US health care was in the middle of a major transformation from traditional indemnity plans to managed care plans.

As the Senior Copywriter on the GE creative team at McDougall Advertising, I developed strategy, branding, creative and wrote all marketing communications direct response collateral for an integrated national enrollment program to persuade a sizable group of GE employees at all job levels who had not yet opted to switch from GE Medical Benefits, an indemnity health plan, to GE Health Cared Preferred, a managed care health plan.

Challenges:

The targeted GE employees, at all employment grades, were relatively happy with their current indemnity plan and perceived that managed health care plans in general would offer them fewer care choices and less freedom at a higher cost. The group had resisted past annual enrollment appeals and were somewhat “entrenched.”

Overall barriers to switching from indemnity coverage to managed care varied from employment level to employment level, necessitating the need to craft hierarchical messaging to speak to five different profiles of GE employees. 

Solution:

I conceived the umbrella brand proposition, "The Benefit of Choice," for GE Health Care Preferred to allay the fears that GE's managed health care plan offered fewer care choices, constrained freedoms and reduced treatment options in comparison with the then current GE employee indemnity health care plan.

I then crafted all communications to prove that GE Health Care Preferred was a health plan that offered freedom of choice. Appeals included testimonial profile stories from real GE employees (some with serious health concerns) at five different GE job level hierarchies who had been well served, despite their initial fears, by enrolling in GE Health Care Preferred.

Results:

The national enrollment program for GE Health Care Preferred, The Benefit of Choice, was highly successful and well surpassed GE’s first year and multi-year goals.

The program helped GE reduce health care costs $5 million in the first year and continued to save GE millions of dollars in subsequent years.