Dive Brief:

• In the last year, GE has increased its social media presence and marketing campaigns, including the launch of the first-ever "Drone Week" on Periscope this summer.
• Now, the digital industrial giant is turning to Instagram for its holiday marketing, kicking off a #DigitalSnowGlobe campaign on the photo-sharing app Tuesday.
• The campaign will leverage the Instagram accounts of GE and its various business units, connecting them to create an interactive scavenger hunt for users.

Dive Insight:

Following the success of its Periscope-powered "Drone Week," GE is leveraging social media again to take its consumers on a journey to see its myriad products and innovations. This time, the over-100-year-old company is using Instagram to help create an interactive scavenger hunt through GE's various Instagram accounts.

"Instagram gives us a platform to show off GE technology through powerful photography and imagery," Sydney Williams, global social media marketing manager at GE, told Marketing Dive. "The objective of the #DigitalSnowGlobe campaign is to illustrate how GE’s digital industrial technology plays an important role in connecting people to the things that matter in life."

Users that find hidden "snow globes" in the various images and videos will have the chance to win prizes like tech gadgets and travel opportunities.

"From transportation to energy [and] to healthcare, these brilliant technologies help us move forward and by exploring GE’s Digital Snow Globe, brought to life across a series of GE and partner Instagram accounts, you’ll also learn how they are surprisingly interconnected," Williams said.

GE explained that the series of mosaic tiles used in the campaign demonstrate how its businesses share technology and knowledge with one another, calling it the "GE Store." GE encourages Instagram fans to "follow the CSX 'Power Express' pulled by GE’s Tier 4 locomotive, the most fuel-efficient locomotive in the world; take in the snowy view atop of a 400 FT wind turbine; and witness the beautiful chaos of the Brilliant Toy Workshop, where data works like magic."

GE's campaign shows how social can be leveraged by B2B companies. "The campaign is aimed at tech enthusiasts who appreciate industrial technologies," Williams told Ad Age. 

Going into 2016, marketers would be remiss to ignore social media as a high priority format for their campaigns. According to Pew Research, 65% of all adults use social media. The medium is increasingly enabling highly-targeted marketing through a wide range of innovative ad formats. 

Shortly after being named CMO in September, Linda Boff told Marketing Dive: "[W]e live at the intersection of machines and software and that means the breadth of stories we can share with audiences is tremendous. Determining which stories are right for both consumers and our B2B audiences, and on which new platforms, is our biggest challenge and biggest opportunity."