The Boy Who Beeps: What Happens When a Child Can Talk to Machines

Kids sometimes make grown-ups see complicated things in simple ways. GE’s new ad about ”brilliant machines“ connected to the Industrial Internet is tapping into that power.

The spot features a small boy who can’t speak but whose voice box produces beeps that allow him to talk to toys, the electrical grid, aircraft and many other machines. “Lots of companies have been trying to tell their Industrial Internet story and we had to take a different approach to make it stand out,” says Peter McCallum, senior director at BBDO, the creative agency that made the ad. “We wanted to tell an industrial-scale story at a human level to elicit emotion and ensure that it resonated with far-reaching audiences.”

The story follows the boy from birth, when his primal "beep” causes considerable distress to his parents. But by the time he is in elementary school, his special power allows him to switch the TV to the American football game for dad (the ad will air for the first time during the NFL kickoff), restore electricity to an entire town and make planes fly on time. “We liked the idea that it’s his natural language,” McCallum says. “He does not have to put on a cape to have these powers. It’s sort of a metaphor for GE.”

Unlike the boy, the Industrial Internet is real. It could soon link billions of machines and devices ranging from smartphones and thermostats to jet engines and medical scanners.

GE believes the network could add $10 and $15 trillion – the size of today’s U.S. economy - to global GDP over the next 20 years. The company’s software arm has developed a software platform called Predix that allows railroads, oil drilling companies, wind farms, hospitals and other customers to perform prognostics on machines, reduce downtime and increase efficiency.

The “Boy Who Beeps” is the first in a series of stories and other content that GE plans to roll out through the rest of the year to illustrate the power of the Industrial Internet.