Is there anything more boring than insurance? A hundred years ago I was a copywriter for a huge insurance company. I'm still in recovery.

But this is an interesting story. In summary, some seemingly-legitimate group issued a report that said Allstate is anti-consumer. The findings include allegations of about six specific bad practices.

A reporter by the name of Herb Denenberg with The Bulletin in Philly called Allstate to get their reaction, assuming he'd get a detailed rebuttal. He got an upthebuttal instead. An excerpted version of how Mr. Denenberg reported this is below:

I called its public relations people at the home office, which is generously stocked with six people to respond to media calls. I thought I'd get an immediate response… I was referred to the Malvern Regional Office…I got a flood of meaningless generalities such as "We stand behind our practices"…  after all the dancing and backpedaling, I discovered that Allstate has nothing to say to refute the merits of the CFA report. Although Allstate claims the report is littered with inaccuracies, they were unable to document them. When I asked why Allstate hasn't prepared a detailed response to the CFA report, I was told that it would give it more credibility than it is due. I replied that if you could refute the report, that would destroy it. Judge for yourself, but my bottom line is that if Allstate could refute the report, it would. If it can't, it will pound on the table and declare its virtue - in broad generalities, which is exactly what it did.

Pretty amazing, isn't it, in this day and age? Now I want to predict the future. Some enterprising person who feels, rightly or wrongly, that he or she has been victimized by Allstate's treatment will start a blog. It will be all about Allstate all the time. Maybe it'll be this fella who just wrote about Allstate the other day? If that happens, I anticipate Allstate may finally discover its more conversational side?

By the way, saying nothing is a famous traditional PR strategy. It is taught in PR 101, 201, 301 and 401, along with courses like in 'Deny Deny Your Way to the Top,' 'Stonewalling for Profitability,' 'Buying Time with Out of Office Replies,' and 'How to Ignore the Obvious Until it Goes Away.'

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