Liz has a couple of excellent posts here and here with great links to some other blogs about Firstline Security and their puppet show, “The Prodigy”. I especially recommend her post on Reality TV and Summer Sales.
There’s an important distinction to be made between Reality TV and a concept like “The Prodigy”. I define the latter as a concept because there is really no indication that it has been sold, that they intend to sell it, or that the focus of the summer project has anything to do with the final product they call “The Prodigy”.
In the case of the Eldest, a camera was present twice: Once during a pep rally in June, and once around the third week of the 10-week stint. Both times it was centered around a staged event intended to bolster the masses. I found this snippet in one of the articles Liz quoted (in relation to the interview process in the initial recruiting phase, which took place at university locations throughout the country) to be very interesting:
“Everything is going to be filmed, and the show will be put together and edited by Actuality,” said Jerod Justice, a junior animal science major and district manager with Firstline. “At that point, it will be ’shopped’ out to major networks. There are already agreements being made, so it will definitely be televised, at least on a cable series.”
This is what they told the students involved in the ‘interview’ process — that it was being shopped to major networks. They also played up the relationship with GE, though they were not specific as to what that relationship was until the students went past the second interview process and were in attendance at the first ‘training session’.
Now, the idea presented with most reality shows is a give and take between the contestant and the producers. The contestants are presented with various challenges for which they apply their strategic, intellectual, physical, and sometimes evil talents to overcome. The idea as it’s presented on these shows is that the contestant still standing at the end wins it all, and that there is an IT to win.
Editorial comment here: In this particular case, the prize is purported to be nearly .75 Million dollars in VC money, a Hummer (humph), and some cash. They even trot out the previous “Prodigy”, who is actually the president of the Firstline division that recruits and hires the college students for summer sales. Do the math here. The person who wins (assuming there really is a winner to be had), will not be off on his own venture. He or She will be a fully-owned Firstline employee. Whatever VC dollars are actually paid out don’t have a thing to do with anyone’s own idea for a business unless that idea is something that jives with the Firstline business plan.
Most interesting to me was the actual paperwork they were given to sign. No mention at all of any reality show in the entire “Advertising Director Manual.” However, there were some eyebrow-raising moments in my read through the whole thing. Here are some highlights:
- A minimum production of 10 accounts per month is expected.
- Licensing is the responsibility of the individual, not the company
- A trade secrets and non-compete agreement is required. The non-compete extends for 24 months.
- Exclusive employment during the term of the contract (as if they’d have any time for anything else…sheesh)
- The real icing on the cake is the Promissory Note they are required to sign at the outset, promising to repay any shortage for advanced ‘housing allowance’ and ’signing bonus’ if they don’t complete the term. 18% interest on the unpaid balance. Yeah, buddy. (Smacking the boy upside the head for signing this one…SIGH).
Does this sound like a contract for a reality show or an apprenticeship/indentured servant agreement to you?
Moving on to sales tactics, I found this gem. This is when there is an already-installed system on the premises. They suggest opening the conversation with this: “I see you’re with XYZ company and I’m here to switch you over to Firstline.” Say WHAT? “I’m upgrading customers with that equipment to the newer equipment”.
Familiar with the term “slamming”? Slamming is what the long distance phone companies do when they call to get you to switch to their service. It’s a smooth and incredibly dishonest technique, where the rep calls and starts the conversation by saying they’ve reviewed your current plan and have a better plan for you. By the time you’re hooked up to the recorded part of the call and giving your info, it’s disclosed that you’re really switching your long distance service to another company. This is the same technique.
So look, the bottom line here is that The Prodigy is a scam, just like Liz calls it. It was a vehicle to sell crap wrapped in the phony allure of fame and fortune. It’s easy to believe these shows are reality, but DG’s experience with AGT (remember, she auditioned in “Chicago”…yeah right) proves otherwise. In this case, it isn’t even a real show…it’s the promise of a real show.
To the commenters who have left remarks about how successful they’ve been with Firstline, I have only this to add to what I’ve written above: You were selling systems when the market wasn’t saturated. You now have a saturated market and some negative customer feedback. At least here in California, your “advertising directors” are being dropped into underprivileged neighborhoods or neighborhoods where systems are already installed by ADT, Honeywell and other vendors. So while you enjoyed success with it, it’s not nearly the lucrative proposition that it was before, which is why deceptive recruiting techniques are now being used to get fresh blood for the enterprise.
So in our case, the Eldest will end his summer about $2K in debt to Alltel, no cash in the bank, and having to take a semester off to recover what he lost through this endeavor. I don’t count that as success and neither does he. In fairness to Firstline, he should have shed the ‘pie inthe sky’ aspirations and looked at the whole thing a bit more cynically, but hey – they do have some excellent salesmen shilling their product
My takeaway from this: The wireless industry needs to be opened up and opened up soon. Part of why they can get away with this stuff is because there isn’t any real competition out there or innovative products. Whether it’s Verizon or AT&T or GE or Firstline, it’s all the same crap wrapped in different paper. Firstline’s services were wireless, with add-ons for VOIP and other wireless promises for the future, all overpriced and not very much value for the money. If the service is worth buying, it shouldn’t need ‘advertising directors’ hawking it door-to-door in the first place.
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