ADT Alarms - Primal Instict
1 February 2008 by SilkyShut your windows! Lock your doors!
No-one is safe!
At least they’re not in the latest ADT Alarms advert is to be believed. Down every alley way, on every street, in every town there’s a burglar lurking.
Probably just waiting to crawl through your cat flap and steal your prized Dads Army toby jug collection.
So pad lock the display cabinet and chain your granny to her bed because they will steal anything!
But wait! What’s this?
It’s a race of sub-humans prowling the roof tops. Using their primal instincts to hunt out the heinous villains that are trying to jemmy open your windows. Communicating with each other in a primitive language the pack moves in to make the kill. Just waiting to bite your face off (Naughty Charlton, naughty!)
It’s quite a picture they paint of modern suburban Britain.
But you know what? It’s also largely complete bollocks. I can’t say that I know anyone who has ever been burgalised. I even once left the front door open to my Birmingham City Centre flat for an entire weekend and still no-one *broke* in.
Even if they did I think I’d rather take my chances with the burglars then have those ADT monkey-men; dishing out their vigilante justice to one and all. At least you might be able to reason with the robbers. The best you could hope for with the roof crawling simians is that waving a banana in front of them might prevent them biting your face off.
But I doubt it would.
This concept of primal instinct making us want to protect our homes never sits to easily with me. Although we love the romanticised justice dished out by Robin Hood; stealing from the rich to give to the poor, I accept that no-one wants their house robbed.
But I think it’s a bit of a stretch of reality to claim that if you caught a scally in your house you’d happily beat him to death with a cricket bat (signed by Beefy, Goochy and Lamby) rather than let him get his thieving hands on your 52 inch HD-ready flat screen TV.
Particularly if you’ve paid 200 quid a year for the past 25 years on home contents insurance. Can you picture yourself (primal) screaming with every swing of the bat “I will not have my insurance premium go up!”?
And you must admit, when you’ve finished pummelling the last breath of life from the robber you’d feel a fool; you could have just let the monkey-men bite his face off and not even broken into a sweat…
(4.7)
3Responses:
mooch
February 10th, 2008 11:59 pm
It’s a jungle out there,
This advert irks because it reinforces the negative press we are getting and peoples perception that as soon as you venture forth from your house you will either:
1. Be mugged and raped
or
2. Have your house broken into and your personal belongings strewn about the place. Fear selling should never be used.
Same goes for all those anti-bacterial adverts “do you have young children? Do you cook food? Spray everywhere, you may have left ecoli for them to eat…”
Bex
June 13th, 2008 9:56 am
As a hypochondriac I, just as a small by-product (amongst other things), have an abject “Fear of Doom”. Therefore this advert is very threatening to the stability of my mental health. I’m only saying..
And don’t get me started on the flu jab ads…They could kill me. I don’t really think that that was what they were aiming for, to be honest.
Parfield
September 13th, 2008 8:12 am
Hi, as someone who has just chased a hoodie burglar out of their nice suburban home in a nice middle class road in the dead of night I can assure you that the advert isn’t too far from the reality of modern Britain. I never thought I’d need an alarm but I will be getting one now.
And “at least you can reason with a robber” - what a load of complete bullshit.
Wait until you have to face four hoodies armed with screwdrivers and blades with nothing more than a rolled up copy of your bloody Guardian to defend yourself.
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