GE is the Big Gorilla of Content Marketing. They have a big team, a lot of money AND they do it right. (Huge teams and big money do not automatically succeed.)
They recently did a B2B marketing outreach by inviting GE evangelists and influencers to fun tours of their R&D facilities. They encourage attendees to take pictures and share them with their followers using #GEInstaWalk. The GE team hand-picked the site for their visuals.
They’d Have to Kill Me
A few years ago I was part of an analyst tour group who was invited to tour Iron Mountain’s ultra-secure underground data center in Western Pennsylvania. The security director was ex-FBI, these guys were not fooling around. When I asked the tour leader if this was one of the safe spots for the President in case of attack, he essentially said that if he told me he’d have to kill me. All right then.
Fascinating tour though. This was one place where we were not allowed to take pictures although you can watch Iron Mountain’s slide show here. And no, they won’t have to kill me if you follow the link.
Action Step
You don’t have to be GE or Iron Mountain to make this work for you. I remember a Spectra Logic tour to their manufacturing facility. Really interesting stuff that had nothing to do with the fact that they served us champagne.
Consider the same (plus or minus the champagne) for your key customers and influencers.