GE’s recent brand campaign showcased the connectivity of machines and the significance of the ‘industrial internet’ in a way that has never been done before – with machines Tweeting in a language mutually shared across machines and software engineers – binary code.
Within these Tweets was a hidden challenge testing the best coders in Australia and revealing just one brilliant winner.
The campaign was devised by Clemenger BBDO Sydney with social media and PR from Edelman Australia, and paid media by MEC.
Joanne Woo, director of communications and corporate affairs for GE Australia & New Zealand, said: “Since Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb, innovation has been in the lifeblood for GE. Over the past 130 years we keep evolving and reinventing ourselves. This campaign helped position GE at the forefront of what will define innovation for the next 50 years – the Industrial Internet.
“Its novel approach and testing challenge showed that machines are ‘talking’ all around us, and behind every machine sits software equally impressive – software that connects, minds, machines and data.”
Paul Nagy, executive creative director Clemenger BBDO Sydney, commented: “At its heart, this is a creative product demonstration of the Industrial Internet that came from a brief about machines that talk to each other – not something you get every day! We were able to tell a love story between a locomotive engine and a wind turbine, plus a light bulb having an emotional crisis. But we wanted more – to build a challenge into the idea that we knew only about 50 people in the country would be able to solve and uncover Australia’s best coder.”
Brendan Forster, head of creative technology Clemenger BBDO Sydney, commented: “For the competition element we wanted to challenge the coding community in a way never done before. We utilised visual cryptography techniques to hide an Easter egg image digitally in the images that featured in our machines’ conversations. In order to decrypt the image and piece it back together the participant needed to write their own algorithm to strip out the hidden code and reassemble to reveal the Easter egg image and a secret URL to visit. First person to find the secret URL wins.”
Over 40,000 people engaged and hundreds tried to crack the code. It took over three weeks and 234 hours and a few clues before one incredible mind eventually did. This very clever and talented person is Andrew Radion, a recent graduate, Civil Engineer and Hydraulic Modeller at GHD.
Andrew Radion is now heading to the GE Minds & Machines Conference in San Francisco – a one of a kind event to bring together the brightest minds from across all industries around the globe to discuss the next phase of the industrial internet.
