Innovative Marketer Directing GE’s Digital Initiatives

As an innovative and forwarding-thinking marketer, Linda Boff is accountable for the successful impact of the marketing strategy around GE’s transformation to a digital industrial company.

Her colleagues say she is not afraid to try something new. They say she works with the passion and mindset of a start-up and as a result her team introduces effective campaigns across multiple channels.

With GE being one of the most recognized names and marketing success stories in the B2B sector, the 124-year-old company embarks on its vast history of telling its story.

As GE’s Chief Marketing Officer, Boff leads customer experience, marketing and branding for the company to intensify commercial and consumer impact. She’s known for deviating from a pure corporate stance and focusing more on the human element of the company, showing up on social media just as people would. The focus is the transformation of industry by connecting the physical and the digital.

In her role, she is focused on GE’s transformation, leading industry with software-defined machines and solutions that are connected, responsive and predictive.

One ad campaign, titled ‘What’s the matter with Owen?’ features the self-deprecating Owen who tries to explain to his parents, and disinterested friends what he does at GE. The campaign resulted in a highly successful recruitment campaign for GE, and the Owen videos successfully reinforced GE’s position as a digital industrial company while recruiting young people as industrial Internet developers.

She joined GE in early 2004 with 18 years of experience in marketing, advertising and communications including senior roles at NBC’s iVillage, Citigroup, and the American Museum of Natural History.

She is on the Board of Partnership with Children, a New York City organization providing social support to 5,000 hard-to-reach school children. She also sits on the Ad Council’s Executive Committee and is a member of Marketing 50. Boff lives by the words “presume good intent.”

Boff holds a BA in political science and psychology from Union College. She says the most important qualities a female leader should have are curiosity and resourcefulness. “One will take you new places and the other will help once you get there,” she said.