Not Just Any Plastic: GE Touts Its Lexan Brand

Can GE Make Lexan As Famous as Teflon?

Lexan Inside?




His surfboard's patented "Turbo Tunnel" fin "can add a little whip on your turning," and helps to "stable out the board" in the water, he says. What does he think of the Lexan in it? "Haven't heard of it," the 42-year-old champion surfer says.

GE aims to change that with a $25 million-plus marketing campaign. The company push to make Lexan a brand name among shoppers is part of a major effort to boost GE's struggling plastics business, and is a piece of the conglomerate's wider advertising campaign costing more than $100 million.

Along with ads featuring the plastic's unique uses, "Lexan" in bold white letters on a grass-green background is plastered across the back of the Dewalt car in the 2003 Nascar Winston Cup Racing Series, and a "Made with GE Lexan Resin" label is appearing on many products.

But it will take some time before consumers recognize GE's Lexan brand the way they know the Intel chip, or Teflon's nonstick coating.

It took Intel at least four to five years after the 1991 launch of its "Intel Inside" branding campaign before consumers started looking for the swirl when shopping for a computer, says Carol Barrett, world-wide director of the "Intel Inside" program.

As part of its effort, Intel offered marketing money to its computer partners such as International Business Machines Corp. if they would display the "Intel Inside" swirl on their computers and in their advertising. The effort was so successful the swirl often became better known that the actual computer brand.

Such a strategy, called "ingredient branding," was pioneered by DuPont Co., Wilmington, Del., which started by touting its Teflon coatings in the 1940s and used the same marketing tactic to promote such products as Lycra, used in stretchy clothing, and Corian, a material resembling stone used for countertops.

Ingredient branding is tricky because it focuses on material used in a larger product; consumers have to be able to touch, see, or feel the product, and that takes a lot of money, says Carol Gee, DuPont's director of global brands. "Can GE spend enough money that they can make consumers care about plastic in a helmet, the plastic in a race car?" she says.

Apparently GE thinks it can, although it already tried to brand Lexan in the 1970s. GE, Fairfield, Conn., ran a television commercial featuring St. Louis Cardinals' pitcher Bob Gibson hurling fastballs at a shatter-proof Lexan screen.

Another GE ad played off of "a bull in a china shop" by showing a bull charging in a shop filled with Lexan furniture and housewares, which didn't break. But GE dropped the costly ad effort in the 1980s and turned its attention to sales of Lexan to industrial clients.

In decades since then, sales of polycarbonate plastic have soared as manufacturers developed new uses for it in products like computers and mobile telephones. Polycarbonate plastic is either formed into sheets, or in pellets that are melted down into a resin that can be molded, such as to make mixing bowls for Wolfgang Puck's food processor or for Pyrex spatulas.

Polycarbonates generally cost more than other plastics because of they don't break easily; have a higher melting point and can be made in a variety of colors.

Sales of the more costly plastic soared during the boom of the 1990s, however, demand fell in 2000 and 2001 by at least 5%, according to the American Plastics Council.

The falloff has hit GE Plastics hard. In 2001, sales fell about 10%, and profit dropped 15%. Last year was looking worse when John Dineen, GE's vice president and general manager of the Lexan business, met with Plastics' top marketing and communication managers to talk about Lexan. With the plastic's 50th anniversary approaching, they decided to expand its marketing of Lexan beyond commercial customers to include the general public.

Now a number of name brands include the slogan, including clothing and camping gear maker Eddie Bauer, Hollywood chef Wolfgang Puck who promotes it as part of his food processor on cable-TV's Home Shopping Network, Nolan and KBC racing helmets, and Robinson Knife Co., maker of Pyrex, Neon and Oneida utensils.

Robert Skerker, Robinson Knife's chief executive, says he wants the Lexan label on his products to show clients, which include Bed, Bath & Beyond and Linen & Things, he uses high-end materials. "I think there is some part of the population that understands Lexan is a premium plastic. They know it's somewhat different," he says.

Bob Bolen, the maker of the Turbo Tunnel surfboard fin, also wants the Lexan label on his products. He says once surfers are familiar with Lexan, they will value it as much as the make of the surfboard itself." It's going to take people like myself with backing from GE" to educate consumers, says Mr. Bolen, a veteran surfer who owns a Huntington Beach, Calif., surf shop.

The branding effort is one element to expanding GE's plastic business again. In addition to appointing John Krenicki as the new plastics chief, GE Chairman and Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt has put a renewed focus on research into types and uses of plastics, including Lexan. For example, in developing new uses for Lexan, GE also is developing a limited-play Lexan DVD that would, after a specified amount of time, erase automatically -- as in the film "Mission Impossible." The advantage for consumers? Such DVDs would cost only as much as a rental movie, and no one has to remember to return them.

Write to Kathryn Kranhold at
