You're In Good Hands With Allstate. Or Not.
As an Allstate customer, a member of our Best and Brightest was not pleased to learn that GM Marketing Maven Mark LaNeve was crawling from the wreckage, crawling from the wreckage, crawling from the wreckage, into a brand new job. At Allstate. So he sent the insurance company an email.
The Volvo and GM brands are dead, thanks to the expertise of Mr. LaNeve and other of his ilk that have sunk them. Now he is welcomed into Allstate due to his “more than 25 years of marketing, sales and general management experience.” Good luck, you’ll need it. His sort of expertise sinks businesses. The old phrase about rats and sinking ships comes to mind.
Gregory, Floyd (Allstate Insurance Company) wrote:
Please allow me to sincerely apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. Mr. LaNeve brings more than 25 years of marketing, sales and general management experience to Allstate. In addition to his accomplishments at GM, which prompted Brand Week magazine to name him “Marketer of the Year” in 2003, he was also president and CEO or [sic] Volvo Cars of North America. We are very pleased to have Mr. LaNeve join our senior management team.
I’m going to close your file for now but please reply to this e-mail at your earliest convenience if you have any questions. I can be reached between the hours of 8:30 am and 4:30 pm Eastern Standard Time.
In an effort to continue to improve our processes you may receive a survey call asking you about how well I handled your concern. We value your responses so that we can provide the best customer service. Thank you for doing business with Allstate.
Sincerely,
More by Robert Farago
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I don't mind the content of that ad, it's reasonably clever (in a M/C mag of course, elsewhere it just inspires fear). But there is one thing I can't let slide - he's wearing an iron cross. Like an actual iron cross, not some WCC homage. It's a classic symbol of nazi power (it was, of course, bastardized by the nazis who took it over from the Kaiserreich, but it remains a potent symbol, at least outside the "west coast chopper" set). He might as well be wearing the totenkopf medal that the SS made so famous - previously a religious symbol showing the acknowledgement of mortality, so it has equally benign roots as the iron cross medal. More to the point, the iron cross (and totenkopf, and swastika) were taken up as ironic symbols by early rebel bikers. They were meant to shake up squares. Do you want your agent to be wearing a bonafided symbol of a 1%er, if you are able to forget the nazi connotations? It's probably worse for him, because he'd get the snot beaten out of him if he showed up at a club hangout in his quasi-colours getup. /endrant