GE Lighting Shares a Glimpse of the Present by Way of the Past in Smart Home Video Series

GE Lighting, a Savant company’s rebranded smart home line CYNC, formerly C by GE, releases three very strategic, yet highly comical digital videos that play off the brand’s legacy and consumer trust to show homeowners how connected technology today can make their lives more convenient, comfortable, safe and more—at home.

The first three films of the new online and social efforts by L&C New York take a humorous approach to show how the practicality of CYNC’s smart home technology would have seemed like magic in decades past. The ads use nostalgia to create emotional connections, with the tagline “Back then, it would have been magical. Now, it’s just practical.”

The CYNC brand includes innovations that make the many benefits of a smart home more accessible and personalised—all while being easy to install and operate. This year, GE Lighting, a Savant company ventured beyond lighting and into the outdoors with its introduction of new products including an Indoor Smart Camera and Outdoor Smart Plug.

“Our goal was to find a way to connect with consumers’ needs around safety, comfort and convenience that the CYNC smart home family of products could solve. This campaign concept provided a clever way to remind the audience of the long-time relationship with the GE brand while causing them to wonder how they ever lived without the CYNC smart home system,” says Rochelle Hartigan, marketing director, GE Lighting, a Savant company based in Cleveland. “The ads take a fresh approach to nostalgia and humour to explain how we’ve transitioned this year from a smart home lighting brand to one offering a full smart home ecosystem, simplifying consumer choice and shopping.”

'Thief in the Night' is set in the early 1900s, with a farmer and his wife solving the mystery of noises in the middle of night by using CYNC’s outdoor flood light, motion sensor and indoor camera to spot a hungry chicken rummaging through the kitchen.

In 'Birthday,' set on a 1950s winter night, a family gets the Hawaiian luau party started by kicking up the CYNC thermostat control, turning on mood lighting, and activating the indoor smart plug to start the music.

'Aerobics' features two women in 1980s-style workout gear, including brightly coloured tights, leg warmers and hair scrunchies. After popping the latest exercise VHS tape into the vintage VCR, one character uses a workout scene set in the innovative new CYNC app to cool the room with the ceiling fan control and change the mood with coloured lighting and then shows off a little more with the CYNC app’s TrueImage feature that showcases lights and screen images that coordinate.

“The well-known GE brand is the perfect vehicle to emphasize the practicality and ease of the new CYNC smart home products,” says Gian Carlo Lanfranco, CCO and co-founder of L&C, formerly known as Lanfranco & Cordova. “Consumers have a fond association with this brand, and the campaign plays off the trust people have in GE in an entertaining, relatable way.”

The films were shot by The Colony’s David Gaddie, recently ranked as the number four director in North America by The One Show Global Creative Rankings 2021. “It wasn’t so much about being period accurate as it was conjuring the vision of the periods that we all identify from popular movies and television,” says David. “Performance, lighting, sound and music from movies and television shows from each era were key reference points. A lot of elements had to be right for the audience to believe we were in the past, even though the characters are using modern technology.”

L&C, a minority-owned creative agency cofounded by Gian Lanfranco and Rolando Cordova, with offices in New York and Lima, was recently named 2021 Top 10 Independent Agency in North America, according to The One Show Global Creative Rankings 2021.