PG&E Smart Meters Ads

[Agent Winston Smith]

I'm always interested in framing of issues, and that goes ten fold with propaganda and commercials. Recently, PG&E has advertised their SMART Meters with people that may or may not be customers or actors.

Consider the Wal Mart commercials where they feature employees talking about how great it is to work for Wal Mart. Why that?
Well, Wal Mart is accused of paying low wages and providing no benefits, and of course, telling their employees to sign up for federal aid, food stamps and medicaid. All of that is true and provable. So, why would Wal Mart advertise themselves with commercials about how much their employees like working for them? Because that is the battle. People know they have low prices, they don't need to advertise that. They need to frame themselves as a good employer and that was the reason for those commercials.

So, what's with these PG&E commercials about people being empowered by their SMART Meters? I'm interested to hear your take on the framing and the intended affect. Follow the link, embedding is disabled (why?).

What's the framing here? Watch this and the other commercials by PG&E about their SMART meters. The framing seems obvious to me but I'm curious about other peoples' interpretations on these advertisements.

https://youtu.be/TBJ9QBaea3s

[Claire]

... people like me are suspicious .....

lol
Well Agent Smith, here's my take. We don't need a smart meter to tell us how we're using too much power!
We just needed big Smiling Bob to tell us to pull the plugs!
And it looks like he'll work for a hamburger and fries.
Of course, so will I...

[Barry]

Follow the link, embedding is disabled (why?).

Here's a couple of the ads from their series, embedded!
I used our video posting tool and pasted the Youtube URL into the dialog

[dustyfilly]

Dear Agent Winston Smith; and our illustrious founding father,
for over the last 2 yrs or so I have watched the consumer news reporters on local SF channels exploring this subject, because of the onslaught of letters they have received from the public.
These actual PG &E customers have called these reporters concerning serious complaints about their newly installed 'Smart Meters'
The main gist is that their bills have on averaged tripled or more. I am sorry I do not have the proper references to lead you to these stories. All I can say is that there appears to be a wide spread and drastic PG&E rate increase directly related to this meter which is clothed in an appetizing name.
More research needs to be done, possibly an article in the bohemian???
thanks Paula