You know the ad. Pretty lady playing on the patio with her kids. They go inside, set the alarm and seconds later the big bad guy kicks in the door. Brinks calls to see if there’s trouble.
Or, jogger goes by house as hubby leaves for work. Jogger ties shoes and kills time. Stands up and kicks in the house door. Brinks calls again.
This type of scare tactic advertising is very annoying. The odds of this happening aren’t good. If it does happen, the big bad dude will slap the phone out of your hand before you say two words to Brinks. Besides, it only takes a few minutes to commit a crime. That woman could be raped within 7 minutes. The guy would be long gone before Brinks calls the cops and they finally show up.
Anyone else grit their teeth when this ad runs for the twentieth time during the day?
Just once, wouldn’t you like to see the pretty lady chase that S.O.B. back out the door with a shotgun? I certainly would enjoy it.
The other thing is, these ads exploit the stereotype of the helpless woman.
I got news for Brinks. Women aren’t dainty and helpless anymore. My dad was career military and a member of the bases Rod & Gun Club. My mom went with him shooting. Before long, she was out shooting him on the range. I pity anyone stupid enough to kick in her door. These days women are taking self defense classes and carrying mace. They aren’t going to faint at the first sign of trouble.
What I also don’t like about those ads is that the women always run UP the stairs, thus cornering themselves. If it doesn’t work in bad slasher flicks, then it sure as hell isn’t gonna work in real life, either.
And yeah, I agree that there’s no way in hell the men would be scared off that easily. Especially the woman whose ex-boyfriend kicks in the door. If he’s psycho enough to kick in the door, he’s not going to be too concerned about a little alarm.
What I want to know is this: if the alarm goes off and you don’t answer the phone, will they still send an officer to check it out? I assume yes, but of course that’s never shown in the ads. I suppose they can only make an ad so violent–they’re not about to show some dude knocking a woman unconscious and dragging her off somewhere–but, shit, I don’t want a security system that only works if I’m able to answer the phone.
The only way I would buy the would-be invader fleeing is if it were some hapless burglar who either didn’t know the home was occupied at the time, or who was trying to be quick and silent. I actually think there was an earlier Brinks commercial to this effect, that involved both a woman and (gasp!) her husband.
You know what’s worse than the Brinks commercials? The sales pitch I was supposed to do for one of their competitors. The scare tactics we were supposed to use were terrible, as were the “special deals” we offered so the homeowners’ sweet little children would be protected from the big bad wolf right away.
Having recently worked in security monitoring, I can declare the ads complete bullshit.
First and foremost, most (as in 99%) of the burglary alarms we received were false. It would be either the owners not punching in their code fast enough or a mouse running past the sensor or the wind rattling a door or et cetera. Phoning the house or business was the first thing we did but as far as I know we never scared a burglar off that way. This was even true of the women’s shelter we monitored. They had a habit of randomly pushing their panic button just to make sure we were paying attention at monitoring. If we had sent the police every time they did that, they wouldn’t have been sheltering any women. They would have gone broke paying the false alarm fines, which started at about $200 for the first occurrence and then went up sharply from there.
Second, police are not normally dispatched for burglary alarms. This is because the police have responded many many many times to false alarms and they do not like to play this game anymore. We had a mobile guard and it was his job to check the places we monitored. However, the mobile guard is no one’s hero. He’s a working class guy just trying to make a buck. He’s not going to fight off an intruder for you. He’s going to stay out of sight (as well as he can in a bright yellow jacket) and call the cops if he sees that something is actually going down. But this is not happening 30 seconds after you hit the alarm. This is happening perhaps up to half an hour later depending on where he was when he got the call.
Third and most importantly, it was up to the clients to let us know if they felt they were being targeted. This did happen once. A business owner had a falling out with a partner and that partner was removed from the alarm system so his code would no longer work. He still had keys though and we were told he would probably be coming back. Indeed he did and the siren was wailing away in the background while he phoned us at monitoring to bitch about the noise. I didn’t let him know that I knew he wasn’t supposed to be in there because if I did he probably would have grabbed whatever valuables he could have before fleeing. Instead, I blamed the alarm on a faulty alarm panel and told him to stay there and wait for the guard. Yes sir, I know it’s noisy but just stand by and our guard will be there to help you shortly.
I line in a rural county West of St. Louis and they are regularly dispatched for motion detector and other types of alarm calls. I’m not claiming they are priority calls, but if deputies are available they will be dispatched.
If you think about it, there seems to be a taboo on TV about showing anyone but white people committing crimes. On some shows like Law & Order and the like, you might occasionally see some, but otherwise, not so much. The Brinks ads bring it to light. We’ve become so PC and litigious in this society, I think they’re afraid of being sued.
Didn’t we have a thread about this a while ago? Some poster got really pissed that they weren’t showing enough black criminals in the Brinks ads, and I think the consensus was not that they were afraid of getting sued (how can you sue for showing a black person in an ad?) but rather that they didn’t want to alienate their customer base.
Those commercials are ridiculous. If an armed intruder breaks into my home, the last thing I’m going to do is retreat from my hidey-hole to answer the phone.
My satellite service provider tends to replace US ads with Canadian ones, but sometimes the US ads get aired. Yes, these bug the hell out of me too because they are playing on the fears of women home with children. I assume they’re effective though, or else they would have moved onto another advertising campaign.
Speaking of which, US ads that is, what really irks me is all of the prescription drug commercials. Holy crap! Ask your doctor this, and ask your doctor that, and don’t take if you have liver disease, high blood pressure, a hang nail, are due for a haircut, wear earrings, or are considering growing a goatee any time soon. And it’s the same fucking Cialis ad every break… over and over… as I’m watching with my 10 and 12 year old.
… right after FCR dude just came back from [gasp]Jared[/gasp].
If a data point makes any difference to DWMarch’s post:
We moved a small hop outside NYC a few years ago, and are now “rural,” with about five to ten acres between properties. We got the alarm mainly for fire protection (i.e., it will detect and call the trucks in long before our neighbors notice), but most of our contact has been with the burglar side of things. The handful of false alarms that went off while we were there got a call within thirty seconds of the alarm going off, and they ask for a code (either the OK or the panic code). No idea what they’d actually do if we gave them the panic code, but I assume it wouldn’t lead to them evacuating their building. We’ve had the police out once (again, false alarm) and in checking the logs and asking dispatch, they went through the regular set of phone calls (i.e., they call our cells first, then other alt numbers) then went right to the police station.
Oh, it’s not Brinks if that makes a difference, but it’s not some highfalutin fancy and/or shmancy service.
YMMV.
Edited to throw a few lumps of overpriced compressed carbon at Sigmagirl
I certainly would enjoy it.