In 1920, Barton worked with Norman Rockwell on a campaign for Edison Mazda light bulbs, a division of General Electric. The ads ran prominently in The Saturday Evening Post. With Barton's copy and Rockwell's illustration, the ads were almost magical, imbuing the ads with a quality of wonder and mystery surrounding the power of the light bulb. Barton's writing for the campaign was typically grand. He extolled artificial light as "The stuff of which memories are made" and proclaimed that "the moments that mean the most are etched in memory by the glow of a lamp."The success of this and subsequent campaigns for Edison Mazda brought the rest of the parent company, General Electric, to BDO as a client by 1923. In the corporate identity advertising Barton created for GE, he proposed the selling point of an "electrical consciousness." Successful as always, Barton used headlines such as "The initials of a friend" to turn a vague corporate entity into a familiar, personal relationship with the consumer. After creating corporate advertising for GE, Barton quickly worked to discourage advertising by individual divisions within GE. Ironically, two of the units most prominent divisions guilty of such advertising was National Lamp Works and Edison Mazda Lamp Works (BDO's first GE division account), which were almost in competition with each other.
A headline from a Barton era ad read, "Ambition means vision and vision means light." This sentimental and grandiose interpretation of the power and meaning of electricity and light in an individual's life was an important factor in BDO's relationship with GE. In a very real sense, Barton's early humanization of General Electric planted a seed that continues to grow as evidenced by GE's current slogan, "We bring good things to life." Indeed, just a quick viewing of General Electric's site shows just how long lasting and effective Barton's humanizing approach has been.