Musing about missing socks in the laundry hasn't been a fresh idea since Jerry Seinfeld tackled the subject in his stand-up days, but General Electric is giving the concept another spin for the social media age.
The company recently launched a fake advocacy campaign called L.O.S.S., the Laundered and Orphaned Sock Society, replete with a dedicated website, some dryly humorous videos (see the latest, above) and, of course, Facebook and Twitter components. The digital effort is a roundabout plug for the company's new line of washers and dryers.
Though GE has recently let itself be the subject of barbed references on NBC's 30 Rock (GE owns 49% of NBC; Comcast owns the rest), the company isn't known for its sense of humor. But, like many other brands, GE has seen the explosion of social media as an opportunity to let its hair down a bit.
Molly Mandell, client partner at LBi US, the ad agency behind the effort, says LBi's creative team threw out a lot of ideas, but the GE people really liked the sock concept, which gently lampoons the earnestness of advocacy campaigns, outlining, for instance the "harrowing conditions" that create sock loss. "They were happy with a clever campaign that was different," Mandell says.