Messaging for Safety Device is Scary
One of my favorite pastimes is critiquing advertisements.
As a longtime professional in the marketing and communications industry, I tend to think I have a good sense of what it takes to get a message across about a product or service in a way that connects well with a given audience.
So, when a company I will call SafeAlert launched a recent ad campaign on Pandora—and completely missed the mark in my mind—I couldn’t help but critique away.
A man tells the story behind the product in the minute-long-ish advertisement. He says his daughter recently went off to college, and he was worried about her safety, so he bought her a SafeAlert device to wear on her clothing.
Good idea, I think. Who doesn’t worry about their kids when they head away from home?
This voice-over man goes on to say that when his daughter has a problem, she can activate her SafeAlert device, and it will signal her friends.
Yes, that’s the kicker right there. The device alerts her friends.
“How about alerting the cops?” I can’t help but ask out loud as I am running and listening to this ad for the first time. And then it gets even better.
The man says his daughter’s friends will be able to talk to one another so they can make a plan to get his daughter to safety. He said the friends will hear everything his daughter is experiencing.
Ah, excellent, I think. The friends—all also in college themselves, mind you—will make a plan to rescue her. And they will hear everything, so, in other words, they can all be traumatized together. Beautiful. Clever.
The guy says at the end of the ad that SafeAlert costs $5 a month. I can’t help but blurt out loud that I’d be willing to spend three times that amount for a product that alerts the police. Hello!
Anyhow, after listening to this ad a dozen or more times, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a bad advertisement or simply a bad product all together. So, I went to the SafeAlert website.
The site is very good. It has clear and simple explanations about how the product works by allowing the user’s phone to instantly communicate with friends’ phones, and the examples they offer up in a series of videos seem to make it clear that this is a product that comes in handy when you’re running and twist your ankle or you fall off of your bike and need a ride home.
It doesn’t address how things might go with SafeAlert if you were to get attacked by a rapist or someone wielding a knife. If you had time, you could yell, “Call the police.” And your friends could call 911, but God, I can’t imagine setting up a situation in which my friends would have to listen while I was being assaulted.
I would sign up for a device like this in a minute if it, you know, would alert the police instead of my best friend in the case of an emergency.
Call me crazy. I’m holding out for the new improved model.
