Monitronics changes its name

DALLAS—Monitronics on Sept. 30 announced a rebranding, changing the company name to MONI and rolling out a new marketing effort.

“One thing that's obviously really important to us in the new brand is to preserve our ongoing relationships with our existing dealers,” Bruce Mungiguerra, MONI's senior vice president of operations, told Security Systems News. “Investment in the new brand will create a stronger ingredient brand for our dealers—ultimately a stronger reputation, better products and services, the ability to create strong packages for our dealers to sell.”

This rebranding will be prevalent throughout the company. “You won't see the name 'Monitronics' anywhere going forward,” he said, adding that this includes a new website, new email addresses and changes to all communications going out of the company.

The name change also allows the company to focus more on the connected home space, he said. “We see the new brand as one that is beginning a new era of smart home security for � MONI, with an emphasis on being more customer-centric and more personalization of security going forward,” he said.

Additionally, the company sees “MONI” as a “more approachable, contemporary name. � It's shorter, it's faster, it's simpler,” Mungiguerra said.

The rebranding comes with a new direct-to-consumer marketing effort, a new direction for the company, according to Mungiguerra, where MONI will be in front of consumers more. “The success of our dealers is extremely important to us � but we can help them in their success by increasing our marketing efforts to help them compete in the smart home space,” he said.

MONI will be “investing quite a bit of money over the next several years into the brand,” according to Mungiguerra. Specifically, the company is looking into TV, radio and direct mail methods of advertising. “We want to try a multitude of mediums that would help us drive some additional awareness and in the end, bring some additional customers to us.”

The company will roll out more announcements and marketing efforts in the fourth quarter of this year.

Mungiguerra said that he doesn't expect difficulties in rebranding the company to consumers, as the Monitronics brand was not put in the spotlight. “We're not having to reinvent who we were; we're able to invent who we're going to be,” he said.

He doesn't expect security companies to have issues with the name change because the company is currently�“pretty well known in the industry as MONI.”

MONI has been working on the name change for about nine months, he said. MONI is also looking to benefit its dealers by putting more focus on lead generation programs, Mungiguerra said, such as the company's recent partnerships with AARP and AAA.