By Rick Stanton
Having worked on more than a couple of insurance accounts, if there was one thing that was consistent, it was how much consumers hate insurance companies. Trust is virtually non-existent.
You buy insurance because you have to, in hopes you never need to use it, and if you do need to use it, most people are pre-disposed to believe the insurance company will screw them.
So now we have pretty much every major insurance advertiser trying to make funny about the dysfunctional relationship that is the client-insurance company marriage.
Geico was the first to try and distract the marketplace with quirky, oh-it’s-not-that-bad-with-us-caveman-crap. But I have to hand it to Geico: I thought they were nuts at first with their approach. But they were smart, because the real message was save up to 15% with them. If you don’t have to use it (fingers crossed), pay less for it, right?
But now you have everyone in the category trying to figure out how to be “proprietarily” cute, or worse yet—clever—about seeming as if they are good guys through the use of humor. I hate the word clever when it comes to advertising.
The absolute stinker in all of this sameness is State Farm. Name a more unlikeable professional football player than Aaron Rodgers. He’s a jerk, on and off the field. He’s the poster boy for arrogance.
Then there’s his totally oily agent, and now they’ve roped Kansas City Chiefs quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, into their train wreck of a creative approach. Worst of all, there’s is no one to like in these ads.
Aflac, Progressive, Farmers, Allstate and even locally adored PEMCO, which cancelled a good friend of mine’s homeowner’s policy because they decided the siding on his house was now suddenly uninsurable—after 20 years of never missing a premium payment! Then there was their tagline that trivialized the hate consumers have for insurance: “They’re just like us, a little different.”Not! They’re just like them.
Insurance companies would be well advised to acknowledge the hatred, as we did with Sterling Health Plans years ago. When we discovered they were loved and trusted by their enrollees, that was all we needed to get them sold to Munich Re six years into our campaign for $353M.
Insurance is serious business, not funny business. Our Sterling ad, linked below. isn’t sexy, it isn’t award winning, it’s just honest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfdSTyAcXfs
http://stantonandnobody.com/portfolio/television/sterling-health-plans-melva/