These commercials are made to lure tech talent by letting them know they're more than the industrial mechanical company they used to be and need people with modern tech skill sets as opposed to knowing how to sling a hammer.

At a smaller scale, certainly. If you're talking thousands of developers, marketing yourself as a good place to work becomes cheaper than paying well (i.e., actually being a good place to work).

>paying well (i.e., actually being a good place to work).

I don't think good pay and good place to work are synonymous in any way. They happen to be correlated because both are methods to attract talent, but one does not cause the other.

You can bet they paid zillions to McKinsey or someone, to absolutely minimize their costs for doing it.