A response to GE's response

As VP of Sales and Marketing for Gallagher Security Management Systems in the Americas, I was pleased to see that coverage of our advertising in Security Systems News created interest among our dealers, GE's dealers, and the media. The article reporting on GE's reaction to Gallagaher's ad placed in the September 21, 2009 Wall Street Journal provided us an introduction to your readers, along with some revealing insights into GE Security.

Our ad, inviting GE Security dealers and end-users to consider doing business with our North American team, noted the wide variety of high-profile clients we serve, including embassies and other highly secure government offices, US military bases, NATO sites, banks, critical infrastructure, and large mines. Considering our long list of customers, we were surprised that GE Security was unaware of our presence in the security systems market.

Gallagher is a New Zealand company with our own research and development group and manufacturing plant; we have over 4,000 installations around the globe on every continent. We hold a dominant position on the world security stage, and it is rare to hear a competitor confess that we snuck up on them.

The response we received at the ASIS show and in days since far exceeded our anticipated return on the advertising dollars invested.  As an example, GE Security has many times the dealers we have at present and therefore should have had noticeably greater booth traffic. Judging by walk-bys throughout the show, that was certainly not the case. And the reception I received from ASIS show attendees was enthusiastic to the point my hand was getting sore from friendly shakes and high fives.

More importantly, we had the opportunity to talk with a lot of people about Cardax FT, our platform for integration and the core access control and intruder alarm functionality it delivers. We were able to demonstrate to attendees how it integrates with a wide range of other systems to deliver comprehensive security solutions, including our PowerFence system, an electric perimeter security system that uses the same software as Cardax FT.

While the ad achieved much more than we had hoped, perhaps the more important development is the number of relationships we are establishing throughout the North American business world in a wide range of industries. That is the most exciting part of the Gallagher story, and we look forward to sharing more of that in the near future.