Those of us who teach public relations should send Progressive Insurance a thank you card.
The company has provided us with a fabulous case study on how failure to communicate can take a bad situation and turn it into a public relations crisis.
The crisis began when comedian and writer Matt Fisher wrote a blog post saying that the insurance company turned against his sister (a Progressive customer) and legally defended the driver who killed her in a car wreck.
According to Fisher, the driver who hit his sister Katie’s car was underinsured. The driver’s insurance company paid his share to Katie’s estate but, because he was underinsured, the difference fell to Progressive. Instead of paying the claim, Progressive defended the driver in court, Fisher wrote. Take a look at his full post, My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer in Court.
Progressive’s original response to Fisher’s post, which went viral, and the outrage it caused was a tweet about the tragic nature of the case and their sympathy toward the Fisher family. The tweet, which was repeated and accompanied by the smiling face of Progressive’s advertising personality, Flo, since has been removed, according to PR Daily.
The insurance company then issued two longer statements denying Fisher’s claim that they were representing the underinsured driver in court, despite having an attorney in the courtroom. Read more about those claims in Progressive’s PR crisis: Victim’s brother and insurer trade conflicting statements.
In its fourth and most recent statement, Progressive apologized for not being more forthcoming during ongoing litigation and announced that, on Aug. 9, a jury determined that the other driver was at fault in Fisher’s wreck. Therefore, Progressive worked with the Fishers and their lawyer to resolve the claim, according to the statement.
Some information cannot be released while litigation is ongoing, but it’s interesting that a company claiming no involvement in the lawsuit would use that as their justification for failure to communicate. The bottom line is that Progressive failed to respond to the issue immediately, appropriately or effectively, ultimately creating a bigger problem for themselves.
(For an excellent overview of the public relations fails in the case, read ‘Worse kind of PR nonsense’: How Progressive botched its crisis response.)
Let’s Talk Nerdy!
What do you think of Progressive’s actions (or lack thereof) in this case? Is ongoing litigation an appropriate justification for the company’s limited communication?
Real Nerds Read!
For more information about this case, check out these posts:
- Flo Suddenly a Problem for Progressive in its Social Media Crisis
- Progressive Insurance’s Twitter PR Nightmare
- Flo and Progressive Insurance — How Not to Do Trust Recovery
- Progressive Update: No Mo Flo?
Dzianis says
A great case for unmarketing . Fail indeed.
profkrg says
@Dzianis unmarketing Thanks for reading. It is so disappointing. My students had excellent case study responses. Perhaps Progressive should have hired them to do PR instead?
Dzianis says
@profkrg @Dzianis unmarketing
yeah, well, you never know what you might tweet with a smiling face… Happens to everyone. It is more the nature of the case, with the court rulings and payments to the guy faulty of accident that depresses me.
profkrg says
@Dzianis @profkrg unmarketing sadly, the fact that it went to court was almost expected to me, but I don’t see the problem with Progressive being more up front with why they were in court. They can’t just pay and pay and pay. They have to protect the company’s interest too.
unmarketing says
@Dzianis @profkrg terrible
profkrg says
@unmarketing @Dzianis A proper response would have been so simple. And yet…