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GE wishes you kids weren’t so interested in your darn MyFaces and Twiddlers

GE wishes you kids weren’t so interested in your darn MyFaces and Twiddlers

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Which company has a bigger market cap — Facebook or General Electric? If you answered "Facebook," you're not only wrong ($208 billion versus $251 billion), but you're also the target of GE's new advertising campaign. The ads star Owen, a super generic Nerdy But Not That Nerdy White Guy who's got a new job as a programmer at GE. Unfortunately, neither his friends nor his parents can understand exactly what that means. ("You're gonna be a pilot?" asks one, while his dad tries to get him to lift his grandpappy's hammer.) 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, 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. (A recent Pew study found that around half of millennials describe themselves as greedy and wasteful.) 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 don't get no respect, and that's when you know a company's irrelevant.