 everyone's on a diet everybody's on a diet everybody's on a diet they're consuming more content than ever so they're getting fat on content and skinny on ads. I'm here at the LinkedIn Studios in the Empire State Building with the fabulous Linda Boff who is not just the CMO GE but we're gonna hear in a moment all the roles she has at GE. It's wonderful to be here with you Nadia I love talking to you and I I just love your view on on the marketing industry so it's great to be here talking. Your title is CMO but you have like eight other things that you do right? So I seem to have collected some jobs along the way so I'm officially our chief marketing and communications officer so communications rolls up to me and in the last year or so I've also taken on learning and development which is a very big deal at GE our leadership training is huge and very recently I became president of our foundation so those things sound a little eclectic they actually do knit together really beautifully because they all bring together our reputation our brand both internally and externally how we show up to our different stakeholders so it makes all the sense in the world to me makes for some busy times but I wouldn't have it any other way it's great. So what innovations coming down the pipe right now that you're enthralled with? Our company was founded by a man who's a household name Thomas Addison and we never really forget that right we never forget that when it comes to as Thomas Addison said taking the world's toughest problems and trying to solve them and I think we have always tried to imbue that in marketing and for us that has often been you and I've talked about this sort of zinging when others say not necessarily following the crowd and by the way look sometimes that's meant that we've been out there earlier then perhaps made sense right you know we were out there when platforms were fairly nascent and at the same time we've been out there in the early early days of of Instagram and so many other things linked in we've been on the LinkedIn platform for for so long and had you know our blogs etc as we think about opportunities in marketing you know it is the golden age of storytelling you know Peter Dinklage was right at the end of Game and Thrones whether we all like the end or not it is all about a story and yet figuring out Nadine not just what the story is because in some ways that's not the hardest part I think the craft of that and the magic right of the creativity is it's it's hard but it's doable where to put what we create so that it actually has attention and engagement and drives you know customer loyalty customer interest listen that is that is harder and harder and it's ironic isn't it we have more channels than we've ever had and yet the appetite for commercial interruption if we want to call it that I think is not high no so everyone's on a diet everybody's on a diet everybody's on a diet they're consuming more content than ever so they're getting fat on content and skinny on ads we have to like figure out what that looks like but I I mean look I I think that the challenge is also the opportunity and it's not sort of shying away from we can't it's sort of figuring out what could this look like and that's where we try to spend our time in the possible we were talking about your infrastructure you have what is it 2000 plus marketers we have a couple thousand yeah we have a couple thousand around the world now they're in all different kinds of roles some are product marketers some are strategic sellers some are brand folks so you know I think at a company like ours and maybe this is true for others marketing just comes in a lot of different flavors our focus now in marketing and frankly across GE is growth yeah right how do we grow how do we make sure that our business objectives are marketing objectives I'd like to think that's always been the case right but I think in the last year we've had a new CEO fantastic Larry Colp and he's really driven this sense of focus and prioritization what is the favorite your most favorite career tip that you either received or given and there can be couple whatever comes to mind so the one that that I always go to and I I've said this to many people although it was something that was given to me and it's again something that's very simple which is this idea you're never as good as you are on your best day never as bad as you are on your worst I think to feel overly confident is something that I think can lull you into a sense of non-reality and to beat yourself yourself up too good is also to not give credence so I try to keep that balance I try to keep it for my team you know when you're when you're dealing with as many issues as you may deal with as a as a big and fairly complicated company it's always good to have a little bit of perspective and context so so that's that's a chestnut that I sort of always go back to okay those are great they gave me goosebumps because you know I can relate to that entirely thank you so much Linda for joining us today my pleasure loved being here likewise and thank you for being with us on top of my