Twice this week an alarm company has pushed a lurid flyer through my letterbox. Under the heading ‘Who’s Next?’, three or four shadowy figures loom from a blue-ink gloom.The one at the back is wearing a wide brimmed hat, such as would mark out a villain in the 1940s. (It occurs, as an aside, that hatmakers, having come up with a new style of hat in those days of universally covered male heads, must have struggled to find a hitherto unserved social niche fortheir novel product. It hardly comes as a surprise that they eventually ended up catering specificly to Evil, with the width of brim indicting the extent of badness posessed by the wearer.)
Though printed in blue, there’s no question but that the figures are intended to be decendants of Conrad’s dark continant. Not just fearmongering then, on a street with a good deal of social housing for old people, but racist fearmongering.
These are local, cowboy fearmongers. It could hardly be expected that the national equivalents- Eircom Phonewatch would be so crude. But, short of such overt racism, there doesn’t seem to be any depth to which Phonewatch won’t stoop to drum up fear (and business). For example, they regularly bring “security experts” over to Ireland to talk about the near certainty of housebreakers stealing all your goods and chattels and leaving you- as was all the rage in Edwardian London- Killed In Your Beds.
These experts can sometimes have some questionable pedigrees. In 2006, they went for a self-confessed housebreaker and thief to act as their surrogate salesman. “He will be giving advice to help turn their heavily mortgaged castles into a fortress”. (per your ever breathless super-soaraway Evening Herald, 11th November 2006).
Even away from these regular explosions of sage secuity advice their day-to-day ads are regularly found to contravene the Advertising Standards Authority’s guidelines against using fear to sell. An Authority which represents self regulation by the advertising industry itself, lest we forget. How effective this regulation is could be guessed at by the fact that Eircom Phonewatch continue to breach their guidelines, without fear of meaninful sanction.
Here they are losing on a complaint. And here. And here. Actually, here’s the full list. It’ll save time.
I’m a customer of Phonewatch’s, and in an earlier home did suffer from a burglery but I strongly object to their marketing practises. Driving up society’s fear of crime- where that fear is not based on a reasonable assessment of risk, but on selling loudspeakers attached to motion sensors- actively prevents rational discussion of the effects of crime on our quality of life.
It also reduces the likelihood that people- particularly old people living alone- will enjoy their evenings at home. And that’s a crime in itself.
2 Comments
I too am a phonewatch customer. I haven’t had their most recent ad campaign through my door, but expect it soon (as an aside… why do a flyer drop to existing customers?)
My experience has been good but also bad. In early November I was in London on business and my wife was also travelling for work. There was an alarm activation. I was phoned (but as I was in a basement conference centre in London only got the message the next day). NONE of the THREE alternate keyholders were phoned. I emailed phonewatch to enquire why. No response.
If they spent more time making sure they complied with their contract (they’re supposed to phone everyone on the list until they get a keyholder) and less time making questionably drawn flyers then I’d be happier.
Daragh,
The flyer was from a rival, local alarm operator. But it prompted me to come back to writing the post I’d meant to some time ago about Eircom’s only slightly more sophisticated advertising strategy.