Sunday, August 31, 2008

Gustav Gives Insurers Get Another Chance – Along with FEMA And NOLA

Some may think that I’ve beat up on State Farm and its brand management lately. Actually, that is not the case. What I did a week ago was to post a link to a blog by an unsatisfied State Farm policyholder. State Farm may have ticked off the wrong guy because he also writes business blogs on brands.

Recently I was reading a book on marketing and branding which singled out State Farm for doing an excellent job of pitching its brand – that State Farm is THERE. It commends State Farm for its response after Hurricane Hugo in 1992. (See The Invisible Touch: The Four Keys to Modern Marketing by Harry Beckwith (2000, Warner Books, p. 101).

With Hurricane Gustav bearing down on New Orleans and the Gulf coast now, we have heard a lot about how FEMA and the City of New Orleans have learned various lessons from the nightmarish Katrina experience three years ago. Katrina will also test the mettle of insurers – including but not limited to State Farm -- to see if they too are better prepared to avoid some of the servicing and coverage wrangles which followed the wake of that storm’s devastation.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I haven't read _The Invisble Touch_, but Hurricane Hugo was in 1989; Hurricane Andrew was in 1992.