Remember those Life Call / Life Alert commercials, with the old lady saying: "I’ve fallen and I can’t get up?"
These commercials are probably very effective for older audiences and recently my family made sure my grandmother, who lives alone and is in her late eighties, has this service. It seems like a great service.
However, I question the placements of their ads. I’ve seen the same Life Alert ad 3 nights in a row during Family Guy on TBS. Each time it was sandwiched by commercials geared towards younger audiences. (I think the Mummy movie trailer and a beer commercial). Do you think this is the target audience for Life Alert? Family Guy viewers? I doubt it. But even if they’re going for the influencers (kids of people who would buy), they’re missing the mark. Maybe their grandparents, but I doubt their parents would need it yet. Who’s handling these ad buys?
Enjoy the old ad in all it’s glory.
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I think there’s something nefarious going on here. Consider this, the LifeAlert people run ads in slots where the target audience is angry young guys. The pathetic concept and execution coupled with the horrifyingly catchy “I’ve fallen…” line fosters antipathy among these young men toward seniors. Then one drunken evening, an angry young man, hopped up on geriatric hatred, breaks into a retirement community and gets medieval. Net result? A hostile environment scares the poor pensioners into becoming subscribers.
Damn clever advertising if you ask me.
Eliot, you’re right, I never even considered that scenario. It’s actually the perfect ad for that type of angry young man.
Should we alert the FCC or BBB or just let the issue play itself out and think to ourselves: “We should’ve done something about that” when we see the news report about the violence at the retirement community and subsequent uptick in Life Alerts sales?