POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

Marketing stupidity in insurance

Yes, I've got plenty of pension stuff in the hopper, but I'm not in the mood to put it out right now.

What I am in the mood for is to make fun of a fluff piece of news that got combined with marketing stupidity recently at Allstate.

Now, you may have heard that there's a new, 13th sign of the zodiac now, and that the signs shifted a bit, too. Here's a HuffPo piece on that.

So, some marketing genius at Allstate thought they'd take advantage of the fluff moving through the news and talk about which signs have more car accidents:

Virgos, known to be critical, meticulous and reserved, are also more likely to get into a car accident, according to Allstate Insurance, which recently compared claims data against the recently "revised" zodiac calendar.

Over the past year, Virgos were nearly 700 percent more likely to be in a car accident when compared to the determined and aware Scorpio, the best drivers in the study. Perhaps a Virgo’s shy, perfectionist nature leads to overly cautious and timid driving habits. By contrast, Scorpios were only involved in 1.5 percent of all accidents in 2010.

The "new" sign, Ophiuchus, faired well in the study as the second-safest drivers on the road. While the jury is still out on the exact characteristics of an Ophiuchus, most astrologers seem to indicate individuals born under this sign will be a bit luckier than the rest.

Fine, just fluff -- until you realize that under the new dates, Scorpio lasts only 6 days, and Virgo lasts 45 days. Uh yeah.

So one of my fellow denizens of the Actuarial Outpost did the math:

Sign Length Acc/Day
Ares 27 4163
Ophiuchus 19 4381
Aquarius 24.25 4407
Capricorn 29 4414
Gemini 31 4416
Scorpio 6 4472
Virgo 45 4703
Pisces 36 4779
Taurus 37 4797
Libra 23 4808
Leo 37 4856
Sagittarius 31 4983
Cancer 20 5077

There's a lot less variation when you compare apples to apples. [And then there's the question of what their real base rates were - we're just assuming that people are evenly born across the year, which isn't exactly true.]

Anyway, I nudged the Allstate marketing folks [and more]. Did they just learn how to use pivottables in Excel and wanted to show their know-how? I've had to proof copy from marketing before to check the numbers.... I think Allstate really should ask their actuaries before they put out anything with numbers in it.

SNORT: Allstate took down the press release. But evidently it lives on in the various PR wire services. Let's see if anybody picks it up.

Meep

Meep is a member of the Irish Catholic mafia, having a suspiciously high number of green-eyed, red-haired friends. While she doesn’t have red hair herself [except when she goes into the sun (rare for any vampire)], she does have green eyes. She’s a raving Papist and is a life actuary on the side [i.e., she counts dead people]. An amateur pain-in-the-ass [willing to go pro!], she likes covering retirement, mortality, math, and education issues.

More Posts