Monday, September 14, 2015

GE wants you to be less interested in Snapchat and more interested in them


If you are unsure of what GE does anymore in your life but can't imagine Samsung, Apple, Verizon, Facebook, or Google in your life, then you're the target of GE's new advertising campaign. The ads star Owen, a super generic "nerdy but not that nerdy as to not offended future company hires" guy who's got a new job as a programmer at GE. Unfortunately for him but for comedic sake, neither his friends nor his parents can understand exactly what that means. Owen, though, insists he's going to do important work, writing code to help turbines power cities and hospitals run more efficiently.



It's a clever series (I think. Still on the fence), and a good way to introduce GE to a younger generation that might never have heard of the company. Suggesting that the rest of the tech world is too busy making GIFs to make a difference also picks up on the younger generation's tendency to be self-loathing. 




However, the underlying message of "Why doesn't anyone pay attention to us?" is a bit self-pitying for a firm ranked eighth on the Fortune 500. We're one step away from GE complaining that it just doesn't get any respect, and that's when you know a company's irrelevant.

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