GE Imagines a World Where We Treat Female Scientists Like Celebrities

Millie Dresselhaus, the first woman to win the National Medal of Science in Engineering, is treated like a Kardashian—photographed, celebrated, followed—in BBDO's new campaign for GE. The 60-second spot is part of GE's audacious plan to employ 20,000 women in STEM roles by 2020 and to have 50/50 gender representation in its technical entry-level programs by the same time. The ad, directed by Nicole Holofcener, shows how celebrating female scientists could help inspire girls to become scientists and help GE find its recruits to meet its 2020 deadline. "We think that celebrating people, in this case women, who have had great achievements is far more important than celebrating people who are famous for fame's sake," said Linda Boff, GE's chief marketing officer. "There are people out there—Millie Dresselhaus is the one we've chosen to highlight—who have done remarkable things and deserve admiration and adulation and holding up those women as role models is a really fun way to shine a light on what we're calling balancing the equation and addressing what is this industry-wide challenge of getting more women in STEM." [kickout id="1"] Added Boff: "Our goal is to have 20,000 women in technical roles by 2020. While we're really proud of the nearly 15,000 that we currently have in technical roles we're talking about adding 36 percent more—I would like to highlight that because while I'm thrilled with how the ad is hopefully going to capture people's attention the heart of this will be more women working in technical roles." According to GE's research, women make up just 13 to 24 percent of IT and engineering programs globally and just 17 to 30 percent join the senior leadership positions. "The industry numbers are a little sobering," said Boff. "The data shows that women are still underrepresented in IT and engineering roles—that's not a GE number, that's just global—so the fact that we can help inject any urgency into this conversation, that's something that we're super proud to be part of." CREDITS Agency: BBDO New York Client: GE Title: Celebrate the Real Heroes Chief Creative Officer, Worldwide: David Lubars Chief Creative Officer, New York: Greg Hahn Executive Creative Director: Michael Aimette Creative Director: Gary Du Toit Creative Director: Lance Vining Executive Producer: George Sholley Senior Content Producer: Angela Narloch Head of Music Production: Rani Vaz Senior Account Director: Kathryn Brown Account Director: Lindsey Cash Account Executive: Joslyn Dunn Assistant Account Executive: Frank Cunningham Group Communications Planning Director: Yin Chung Production Company: Bob Industries Director: Nicole Holofcener DOP: Danny Moder Executive Producer: Chuck Ryant Line Producer: Brian Etting Editorial: Whitehouse Post Editor: Charlie Harvey Assistant Editor: Theo Mercado Executive Producer: Lauren Hertzberg Senior Producer: Alejandra Alarcon Music & Sound Design: Human Composer: Morgan Visconti Sound Designer: Michael Jurasits Executive Producer: James Dean Wells Visual Effects: Carbon VFX Senior VFX Supervisor: Kieran Walsh Executive Producer: Frank Devlin Senior Producer: Paul O’Beirne Sound Mix: Sonic Union Mixer: Michael Marinelli Color: Carbon VFX Colorist: Maria Carretero Executive Producer: Paul O’Beirne