MONI Smart Security on Monday announced that it has entered into a trademark licensing agreement with The Brink’s Company and will subsequently be rebranding MONI and LiveWatch, the company's DIY subsidiary, as "BRINKS Home Security."
Once a household name in the residential security space, Brink’s Home Security was officially spun off from The Brinks Company in 2008 and rebranded as Broadview Security a year later. Broadview itself was later acquired by Tyco International and merged with ADT.
Despite its nearly nine-year absence from the industry, Jeff Gardner, MONI’s President and CEO, says that the Brink's brand still has a lot of cache among consumers, trailing only ADT as the most recognized name in home security.
“Our business has really changed a lot in the last few years with some really big brands coming into the market,” Gardner says. “We’ve always coveted the Brink’s brand. Brink’s has been around for 150 years and it still has fairly high brand awareness in the security space.”
Although the company went through a rebrand as recently as 2016 – transitioning from the former Monitronics to what is now MONI Smart Security – and was doing well and continuing to grow, Gardner says becoming BRINKS Home Security puts them into the “big leagues” much faster at what he believes is a crucial time in the industry.
“It is really going to allow us to improve our growth profile. We’re going to roll this brand out in the second quarter and we think it’s going to mean higher brand awareness, which means we will get more leads into our sales funnel,” he adds. “We still have to explain a lot what MONI and LiveWatch are to customers as they are not household names.”
In addition, Gardner says that combining MONI and LiveWatch under a single brand will make them a much stronger company and a better partner for their dealers moving forward. Currently, 65 percent of the company’s business comes from its dealer base, which Gardner says is excited about the move. “The number one obstacle they deal with every day is selling against ADT’s brand awareness and this puts us right in the game,” he says.
And while the company’s dealers will likely see increased sales as a result of the rebrand, the company expects its’ direct-to-consumer sales will also accelerate.
“LiveWatch has been doing very, very well with a brand which, in its own right, has improved consumer awareness but is still very low… and doesn’t even come close to Brink’s. Having that brand, when they call a customer they don’t have to spend a few minutes explaining what LiveWatch is,” Gardner says. “People are going to know what Brink’s is and so we really believe that the efficiency of our marketing engine, which is a lot about digital marketing and direct response television (ads), will improve greatly. If we have just a modest improvement in the number of leads that we get and in the closing rate we see from our sales people, this will turn out to be a slam dunk investment.”
While the company’s goal in renaming itself as MONI Smart Security was to convey the fact that they were focused on the evolution from traditional burglar and fire alarm monitoring to newer, more advanced smart home technology, Gardner doesn’t believe that the transition to Brink’s will hinder that effort one bit. On the contrary, he thinks it will only enhance it.
“This is much more than a name change for us. We’re going to be rolling out an entire new merchandising approach to the business that will be heavily focused on smart home products and they will be featured more predominantly in our product advertising,” Gardner explains. “We’re still working how we go to market with the Brink’s brand – we will be making more announcements on that over the next couple of weeks – but we think there is a huge opportunity for us, given what we’ve done in the smart home category, to really use the Brink’s brand to accentuate that and make us a strong number two player in the space.”
Under the terms of the agreement, MONI will have exclusive use of the BRINKS and BRINKS Home Security trademarks related to the residential smart home and home security categories in the U.S and Canada. MONI will pay Brink’s customary licensing fees and minimum and growth-based royalties that will increase overtime as the BRINKS Home Security brand is reintroduced.
MONI said it expects to pay first-year royalties of approximately $5 million. The agreement provides for an initial term of seven years and, subject to certain conditions, allows for subsequent renewal periods whereby MONI can extend the agreement beyond 20 years.
Gardner acknowledges that the company’s rebranding efforts will take a lot of work but says that it’s necessary given the investments that other brand name companies are making in the industry.
“This allows us at a time when brand is so important – remember Amazon, Google, Apple, SimpliSafe, and Ring are all getting into the market and investing a lot of money in brand – and this is going to make us the clear number two across a number of different categories in the space,” he says.
About the Author:
Joel Griffin is the Editor-in-Chief of SecurityInfoWatch.com and a veteran security journalist. You can reach him at [email protected].
