video – Page 22 – Andrew Careaga

No wonder public relations gets such a bad rap. Even PR’s comrades in marketing, the ad folks, are presenting PR in a negative light and perpetuating the slick spin-doc stereotype.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/fAdAq98nb_o" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

I’m referring, of course, to Apple’s latest Mac vs. PC TV ad. The one I saw last night features a PR spokeswoman for the PC guy (John Hodgman) who tries to put a positive spin on the problems with Microsoft’s Vista operating system. It’s one of three new Mac vs. PC ads Apple has rolled out recently, and as Digital Journal reports, the new ads are more mean-spirited than previous ones.

I haven’t seen the other two ads — only the “PR Lady” piece — so I’m not qualified to comment. But it isn’t the mean-spiritedness that I mind as much as it is the way fellow marketers are perpetuating the corporate PR stereotype. For instance, as Digital Journal reports, “When PC admits how many users have gone back to XP after facing challenges with Vista, the PR rep says: ‘By downgrading he means they’re upgrading to an older, more familiar experience.'”

Besides, what PR person ever says “No comment”? Again, another stereotype.

It seems the new PR Lady ad might say more about the state of corporate ad agencies today than the PR business.

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Now playing: Albert King – Can’t You See What You’re Doing To Me
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Mike Wesch, a professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University and one of the most thought-provoking faculty members to have discovered YouTube, has once again hit a nerve with a video message gone viral. Last winter it was The Machine Is Us/ing Us, a presentation of how the Internet and hypermedia is changing the way we communicate, collaborate and work (discovered via a February 2007 entry on Karine Joly’s blog). This time around, Wesch addresses the state of higher education in the United States — or at Kansas State, anyway — with A Vision of Students Today. Clocking in at under five minutes, the video, in Wesch’s words, “summariz[es] some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime.”

Reaction on the web has been widespread — more than 4,300 comments on the YouTube site alone. At Wired Science, Aaron Rowe calls Wesch’s assessment (actually a collaboration with 200 K State students) “spot on” and adds:

For young men and women that are accustomed to the instant gratification of the web, even the simple act of flipping through the the glossary of a textbook may be unthinkable. Venerable professors may view this as impatience and laziness, but that would be a superficial assessment. My generation has become acclimated to the efficiency and immediate feedback of the internet. Once you have shown a farmer a tractor, they will never want to plow a field by hand again.

Watch the video, and ponder what it means for our business. You can also join the discussion.

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Now playing: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss – Fortune Teller
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