What's going on with State Farm and why they're not doing a Super Bowl ad this year.

 

To understand what's going on with State Farm and them not doing a Super Bowl ad I read, State Farm will not advertise during Super Bowl amid Los Angeles fires by Chris Kelly. In their article they say how State Farm will not be doing an ad this year for the Super Bowl unlike in previous years due to backlash. This backlash is from the company canceling 72,000 insurance policies a year ago, many of them being in the southern California area. The company said that they had gotten over 7,500 home and auto claims for California which they are giving out tens of millions of dollars for. 

I chose this article because I think what State Farm did wasn’t great but also I think that it shouldn't have blown up in the way it did. Even though the value proposition of State Farm is to provide people with insurance to cover their home and vehicles when unexpected things happen to them I don't believe that it was their fault the people don't have insurance to protect them from the fires. They had gotten rid of the policies a year before the fires happened. That left plenty of time for people to find a new place to get insurance that protects their things from fires. However, State Farm getting rid of these policies  in the first place was not a good thing and they shouldn't have done that.

With so much backlash you would think that the company would have a good way to try and solve this and are actively trying to calm people down, you would be wrong. What seems to be their solution to this problem is to lie low and hope people will move onto the next big thing to be mad about. This means that they canceled their Super Bowl commercial this year. This  has backfired for them big time. If I were them I would have tried to spin it in a different way such as, using the money they would have used for the commercial and give it to charities that are helping the people affected by these fires. To try and spin them in a better light so people might forget about them canceling so many policies a year prior.

What I've learned from watching and reading about this happening to State Farm is that when your company has found its way into a controversy or is getting backlash from something they did it's better to do anything then just sit and be quiet and try and let the storm pass on.