The Challenge

At the time, the entire category used fear to sell security products. Advertising included images of dark shadows breaking into houses and/or product imagery on dark backgrounds that were devoid of any kind of emotion. As a result, negative imagery became associated with the category, in general, and the Schlage brand, specifically.

But with sales declining as a result of increased competitive pressure in what was largely becoming a commodity category in the minds of the consumer, it was time to relaunch the brand and differentiate it from competitors.

Advertising at the time focused on what it’s made of, what it looks like or what it does. The message is usually about the “thing” and rarely about the actual person buying it.  The image was cold, dark and largely negative and there was nothing to separate one brand from another.  Link to previous campaign: Schlage TV

The Opportunity

We conducted three months of consumer research to understand what they thought and see if we could find a more meaningful place for the brand to play and reconnect emotionally with B2C and B2B consumers. No matter the target audience, people are people everywhere. They worry about their decisions and hope they’ve made the right ones, whether it’s for themselves, their families, or their clients. Security is a particular concern. In fact, research showed that people worry more about a violation of their security than any other criminal offense. However, these audiences also reacted negatively to fear-based communication.

From negative to positive. The word “security” in this context took people down a negative path (i.e. alarms, guard dogs, police), but when it came to their homes, people wanted a “sense of security” – which was a positive emotion, not negative. A new definition emerged – security was “not about retreating or isolation but about reaching out.”

The Idea

Real Security Sets You Free

The Work

The Schlage Brand Handbook is available to review in its entirety.

The Results

After just one year of advertising, brand affinity scores improved across all metrics for all three customer segments (consumer, residential builder and commercial)

• Unaided awareness significantly outpaced competitive brands (1.5X higher than nearest competition against builder audience and 2X higher against commercial audience)

• Purchase consideration outpaced competitive brands across builder and commercial audiences by 2-3X

• Brand preference outpaced competitors across all audiences by 3-5X

• Schlage dominated ”seen as a leader” vs competitive brands

The Caveats

The Schlage Brand Relaunch was developed and managed by members of the team during their previous lives together. The original agency is cited below.

• Team members: Michelle Cheney/Strategy, Julie Bowman/Copy, Briony Wilson/Art, Craig Cooper/ECD

• Agency at the time: DDB Worldwide