A new direction is risky but rewarding, and never boring
Tom KirkmanIndependent Project Manager
Taking a new direction not embarked on before can be risky, but also rewarding.
Certainly not boring.
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“The average tenure of an American chief executive is a bit over seven years.
Dan Amos, who took the corner office at Aflac in 1990, is in his 36th.
When Warren Buffett retires as leader of Berkshire Hathaway at the end of this year, Mr. Amos will become the longest-serving CEO of any Fortune 250 company.
… Aflac—the Columbus, Ga.-based company Mr. Amos’s father and uncles founded in 1955—sells “supplemental insurance,” the cash payouts of which recoup income loss, travel expenses and other costs that primary plans don’t cover.
The oddball nature of the product, paradoxically, is probably the reason you’ve heard of it.
That and the company’s ungraceful name, an acronym for American Family Life Assurance Co.
In 2000, a decade into his tenure atop the company, Mr. Amos realized it needed better name recognition.
His wife, Kathelen, suggested a Manhattan ad agency called Kaplan Thaler.
One of the firm’s employees, sitting with a colleague beside a pond in Central Park, noted that ducks quacking nearby sounded like they were saying “Aflac.”
Thus began a string of ads in which an irksome white duck, able only to squawk the company’s name, tries to tell ordinary people that they could secure themselves against losses primary health insurers likely won’t cover.
Mr. Amos recalls professional advice to go with a more conventional ad featuring an actor-celebrity. He went with the duck.
Why did it work? “We were making fun of ourselves,” Mr. Amos says in a southern Georgia accent.
In those days very few companies, least of all life and health insurers, would have dared to engage in self-effacing humor.
The good hands of Allstate and Prudential’s rock were sober affairs.
The waterfowl ad was a coup. Aflac’s sales doubled in three years: a fine reminder, which incidentally our political class could profitably remember, that gentle self-mockery always appeals. …”
-<[ Snip last half of the article, which has some uplifting and practical business insights ]>-