Taser C2 Personal Protector
The good news for Taser International is that its brand is a household name: As Kleenex is to facial tissues, so Taser is to electroshock stun weapons. The bad news is that many of us have become familiar with it through clips on television or online of bad guys being shocked into submission, or goofball reporters voluntarily receiving an electrode blast to see what will happen (falling over, typically). The context is often: This is hilarious, or disturbing, or both.
“I think anyone would be envious of our brand name,” says Steve Tuttle, vice president of communications for the company. It’s a challenge for any product maker, he argues, to make sure that consumers “feel” the right way about its brand. And it is with this in mind that Taser has lately made its latest run at the mainstream consumer market, with the Taser C2 Personal Protector, a model that is, if not exactly kinder and gentler, then at least more innocent-looking. Also: it’s available in pink and in a leopard print.
Taser was founded in 1993, and last year reported sales of more than $100 million. Most of that came from police departments that favor models like the Taser X26 and the Advanced Taser M26, which resemble big, crazy sci-fi weapons. Last year the company introduced the $300 C2, which is smaller and doesn’t look like a gun at all; it looks like an electric shaver or some kind of back-massage device. (Tip: Don’t accidentally use a C2 for those purposes.) So far about 23,000 have been sold, and the devices are now available from retailers like Cabela’s, Academy and Sports Authority.
It may be surprising to learn that the average citizen was actually meant to be Taser’s original market; its early, black or gray, pistol-shaped models were sold at places like Sharper Image. They cost as much as $800. “Wrong shape, wrong pricing, wrong color,” Tuttle says now. Women often found the thing too “ominous” — a big problem if Taser wanted to position its devices as a personal-safety alternative to sprays like Mace. In addition, what many average citizens wanted to know was: If these things are so great, why don’t the police use them? After several years of losing money, Taser shifted its efforts to law enforcement, and its products are now used by 12,700 police departments. It continued to sell to regular citizens, but not many of them.
“We finally listened to the customer,” Tuttle says. The customer was not comfortable carrying something that would cause people to dive under tables yelling, “Gun!” if you took it out in a restaurant. The customer liked sleek gizmos, and vibrant, fashionable colors. The customer wanted something light and small enough to put in a handbag. Of course, the customer still wanted to propel tiny electrodes up to 15 feet, affecting “the sensory and motor functions” (as the company Web site puts it) of whomever they strike, with “incredible takedown power.”
The company has been fairly clever about drumming up nonscary publicity in recent months. Aside from the mere existence of a “fashion pink” Taser, which alone is likely to attract press interest, it showed up at the Consumer Electronics Show with a Taser holster that has a built-in MP3 player. And it has received attention by way of an Arizona woman who peddles Taser devices in at-home gatherings — “Tupperware parties for the Taser” is how her business is invariably described.
Mention this to Tuttle, and he says that those are “seminars,” not parties, and that the main marketing vehicle has been a 30-minute infomercial, because properly explaining a Taser takes time. A highlight is watching an ultimate-fighting champion fold up like a card table when 95-pound “Jane Doe” zaps him in the gut. But we’re also assured by a variety of experts that the effects are temporary and that the Taser is safer than a gun. “People get how this can save lives,” Tuttle says. “And once they get it, it’s like a big, giant lightning bolt — pardon the pun — just like, ‘Aha!’ ”
As with the good news of familiarity versus the bad news of notoriety, Taser’s efforts seem to all be about striking a balance. The new device comes in a shape that Tuttle says even his 73-year-old mother is comfortable with (he gave her one for Christmas), but it also has that impressive ability to crumple any opponent. Fun publicity, but with the authority of law enforcement behind it. In other words, it sells the reassuring feeling of security we associate with a nostalgic past — but one made possible by an electroshock stun device.