This is a follow up–and a short review–of last week’s mention of RapidSOS’s premiere of their ‘Behind the Emergency’ video. Your Editor viewed this today, along with most of the panel discussion following, which was aired as part of RapidSOS’ Innovation Day in Reno, Nevada. I have an interest in emergency services and first responders, having delved into their complex world during my time as the marketing director of the (now-defunct) Viterion Digital Health, and with a friend who is former EMS. Otherwise, I have zero connection to RapidSOS.

Being the cynical marketer and writer I am, I expected something more salesy, more commercial, more pitchy. This mercifully was not. It was informative. It used actor and endorser Jeremy Renner, plus testimonies from emergency service dispatchers and first responders, in a professional, low-key, and semi-documentary fashion. It was a video with real production values, increasingly a rarity. Not selling their AI assisted platform–the name wasn’t even mentioned–but in the circumstances of what public safety is, the people, what they do, and what they face, such as responding to emergencies in the rural backcountry of Nevada. Time is everything. It was about the problems they face and what emergency services need to be more effective. 

Why Mr. Renner? He was in a horrible accident in a snowcat three years in that backcountry, and became interested in emergency response as a result. While the benefit was clear–tech cuts the time for 911 public safety centers’ dispatchers and responders to coordinate multiple resources needed to respond to a call, and RapidSOS has the AI tech to connect the pieces more seamlessly and faster–it didn’t bang you over the head with The Brand or The Product even at the end. It may have been a 12 minute commercial, but it was a damn good one and a rare one today. You can view it here.

I also stuck around for part of the live panel that was with the CEO, Reno’s mayor Hillary Scheive, Reno’s director of public safety Cody Shadle, retired firefighter and founder of eFireX Jesse Corletto, and chaired by a company executive whose name I did not catch. It was again about the emergencies they typically face in both the city, the pressure on dispatchers in handling multiple situations, and more rural environments in Washoe County and how coordinating their resources over a large area is a huge challenge. Every connection made better saves time and is “good AI”. Drones, for instance, can get to a scene faster and feed data back to dispatchers as they coordinate, and responders as they are arriving.

A company that is beneficially using AI for the public, and an interesting, low-key exposition on how one company is integrating it into its services.

Editor’s note 1 May: Of interest to marketers re strategy is that the preview clip (on the website) is also being run as a RapidSOS commercial on streaming service Pluto. The spot closes with the logo and a link on a black screen. I suspect there are buys elsewhere.