Welcome to My New Innovation!

“Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” Thomas Edison

General Electric was named 6th on Fortune 500’s annual ranking of America’s largest Corporations but it is number 1 on my priority list! I chose GE as the topic for my Corporate Relations class assignment because of its renowned ingenuity, questionable undertakings (considering my home town is located on the Hudson River), and the simple fact that my GE stockholder portfolio has plummeted. I guess you can say I am already well invested in this conglomerate!

About the company
General Electric leads the technological industry as it develops products such as jet engines, gas turbines and even medical imagining equipment. According to Wikipedia, Forbes ranked GE as the world’s largest company, with 323,000 employees worldwide in 2009. GE has even broken the media barrier with an 80 percent stake in NBC Universal, making it a driving force in television and film. Additionally, NBC Universal’s recent partnership with the News Corporation to form Hulu.com, a video-streaming website, GE has now immersed into the world of online entertainment. As a Communications student, in future blogs I will be taking a further look into GE’s successes and or failures within the social media network.

GE: Friend or Foe
GE has much to boast about when it comes to lending a helping hand, or a couple million dollars. From providing company bailouts to its bountiful contributions to the United States health care market, GE looks philanthropic on the outside. One should give kudos to GE’s public relations people for doing such a spectacular job in this category. However, some of what GE’s publicists and image consultants aren’t saying is that from 1947 to 1977 GE dumped an estimated 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson. Or that on April 11th, 2008 GE’s stock (NYSE-GE) plunged 13% to $32.05, devastating investors like myself. Not to mention, it erased about $47 billion in market value and put a big cut in the company’s annual earnings forecast. This stock decline was recorded as the worst for GE since the stock market crash of 1987.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Throughout this semester I will be taking a look at how GE communicates their reputation, emphasizing the positive and minimizing the negative (if they even address the negative at all) through different media outlets. I also want to uncover the challenges and opportunities that exist for the PR people at GE for improving the company’s reputation. And lastly, as a future public relations practitioner, I will take a look at GE’s job market, including new promotions and daily earnings.

Watch this!!

My intentions for this blog are to be witty and creative. It is not meant to offend the geeky, analytical type (aka GE’s target audience), but my plan is to look at the company through a somewhat critical lens, while playing the Devil’s Advocate. Sincerely yours, GEewhiz!