But it is damn funny
The typical sell for a video doorbell is: “You need to see what’s going on at your front door from your phone so no one steals your Amazon packages.” Smart home company Wyze has gone a step further, warning its prospective users: “You need a video doorbell so your neighborhood kids don’t put flaming bags of poop on your doormat.”
In a frankly hilarious video promoting the new Wyze Video Doorbell Pro, the company invites you to purchase its newest doorbell so you can keep a watchful eye over the bonafide war zone that is the classic suburban neighborhood.
The video opens with a soothing James Earl Jones-style voiceover discussing the magnificence of the American “Front Porch” as a young boy runs joyfully along the path to his front door. But as we zoom in, the child is revealed to be a grubby little turd who is playing Ding Dong Ditch on a soon-to-be angry dad.
We see him pushing the Wyze doorbell frantically and peering menacingly in through the fisheye lens on the homeowner’s Wyze app. As the man leaps up and chases the kid down his front path, he clips a delivery driver, who responds by kicking the package he was delivering onto the porch with all the finesse of an NFL kicker.
All the while, the soothing narrator is telling us about the benefits of Wyze’s new doorbell — including package detection and pet detection — as, on cue, the family’s small terrier runs out to attack the mail carrier.
As the voiceover waxes lyrical on neighborly neighbors bringing by a basketful of freshly picked garden zucchinis, the husband is pelted with eggs by an entire gang of neighborhood kids. When his wife comes out to save him, one of those dastardly kids puts — what we can only assume by her face as she stamps it out — a bag full of flaming dog poop on the doormat.
It’s clearly a send-up of video doorbell company Ring’s own marketing push, which is focused on how neighborly we all are and how we are all looking out for each other and our packages. In the end — sad as it is to say — Wyze is probably painting a slightly more realistic picture of the storied American neighborhood — and of why you might actually want a video doorbell.
