Esurance

Dear Esurance,

First, let me say that your Super Bowl advertising concept was genius in this age of digital media. Well done. But let’s be honest, once someone wins, they’re going to get their picture taken with a big check, the story will linger for a day or so – maybe garnering some attention from CNN or Fox – then disappear. You’ll have made a great commercial, gotten some serious ambassadorship out of it (at least for a couple days),  and someone will be very happy. But then things will settle down. Sure, the winner might wear an Esurance tee shirt around Omaha, or wherever they’re from, but mostly the story will go away. Pretty quickly.

I have an alternative solution.

As I tweeted last night amidst a sea of other tweets with the #EsuranceSave30 hashtag, I’m willing to help you ensure that the money is spent wisely. In keeping with your concept, I will take only 30% of the 1.5 million dollars – and donate the rest to charity. Could my family use 1.5 million? Absolutely. But we’ve never had that kind of money, so it’s really just pretend. Besides, we don’t need that much. We have two daughters who might go to college one day, so we’ll put some aside for that. We might even pay off our house. But we can do all that with about 30% of 1.5 million.

Here’s how I’d use the other $1,050,000 – distribute it to various charities across the country in denominations of $10-20K (which, according to a friend at an NPO, is a perfect amount, “For NPOs, $10K is the nail that saves the horseshoe in battle. Strategic investment at the right time is priceless to us.”) I’d set up a website so that charities could send in their pitches for their portion of the money, and, if you’d like, do all of this with Esurance as the official sponsor of the giveaway. Even if the lawyers say you can’t be part of this secondary distribution, I’d make sure everyone knew it was your brand that was indirectly responsible for the act of benevolence. Oh, and yes, I’d also switch my insurance to Esurance.

So what do you say? 1.5 million could go a long way to help a lot of people. Let’s do this.

http://youtu.be/WgOkWDum1-s

The Best Commercial of the Super Bowl
Behind the Door

Jim Mitchem

Writer. Father to daughters. Husband. Ad man. Raised by wolves. @jmitchem on twitter. First novel, Minor King, out now.

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