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One of the visitors to our site sent us this
e-mail: "Has anyone taken notice of the
Progressive Insurance ad where some jilted woman
uses a Voodoo Doll to get even with some guy? She
does a bunch of stuff to cause him some pain. They
would not have the balls to run a violence against
woman ad."
This e-mail also mentioned that she takes a pair
of wire cutters to his genitals. I couldn't believe
it. How could that be. Must be a misinterpretation.
But then I saw the ad. (See http://64.177.226.152/men/balls.ram
 )
I couldn't believe it. How could this ad ever reach
the air, much less the client. How could it get by
the FCC. I guess it's the old adage. Men deserve
whatever they get for saying or doing something a
woman doesn't like without any retribution.
However, it does support age old findings that show
that a large percentage of domestic
violence cases (at least one-third) are
perpetrated by women. If that's their point, it
makes more sense. It should have a number for the
Domestic Violence Hotline after it, however.
The ad shows what appears to be a jilted woman
making a voodoo doll on a web site (we presume
Progressive offers this service on their web site,
since they created this ad to promote their "award
winning" web site). He's dancing in a public place
with a woman. The apparently jilted woman colors
the voodoo dolls feet red. Back on the dance floor,
he goes into extreme pain from his feet. Then back
to the voodoo doll. She moves a pair of wire
cutters across the screen towards his crotch. Back
to live action, he's on the couch with this other
woman, she's coming on pretty heavy, pulling his
shirt up and all of a sudden, he grimaces in shock
and looks down at his
crotch.
We only assume she's
castarated him. You check the ad out for yourself
at http://64.177.226.152/men/balls.ram
and see what you think. Then email your response to
everyone in your address book asking them to look
at the commercial and see what they think with the
suggestion to write Progressive. Maybe flood their
800 number (800.888.7764 is one). You have to wait
through their menu and then wait until an operator
picks up, but they will take your comments over the
phone. We don't know if they go anywhere and we
haven't gotten a response for a rationale that we
requested, but if enough people call, and enough
people write and enough people cancel their
insurance and enough people email their friends
asking them to do the same, maybe something will
happen. We did send an inquiry to Progressive,
however. They defended their commercial as
humorous
and entertaining. I, for one, would have a hard
time sleeping at night if I were married to whoever
created this commercial. Where did these people
come from? Not Venus - since the portrayal of
both women supports negative stereotypes of women.
They aren't from Mars since they want to mutilate
men, also portrayed with negative stereotyping.
They even portray a negative and very inaccurate
stereotyping of the Voodoo religion. They either
have a very strange target market or they really
don't understand ethics and target marketing. I
think I figured it out. They're from Pluto - and I
don't mean the planet.
Our E-Mail
We also wrote to Progressive on 7/24/02 and are
awaiting a real response. Since it's been over a
month, we've decided to send a letter to the
FCC,
among other organizations. Consider doing the
same.
"We understand you are running very anti-male tv
commercials i.e., Voo Doo Doll. If you really are
"progressive", we ask that you remove them
immediately. It's not funny, it is offensive. If
you're not going to, the visitors to our site would
like to know your rationale. (We had 38,234 hits
yesterday.)" Gordon Clay
Their Only
Response
Date: 7/24/2002 12:53:31 PM From: webmaster@progressive.com
Dear Mr. Clay,
Thank you for contacting Progressive directly
about our advertising. We take feedback like yours
seriously as we develop our advertising plans.
Your feedback will be forwarded directly to our
advertising department.
We are proud of our award winning Web Site,
progressive.com, and created this advertisement to
promote its superiority in a humorous, entertaining
manner. We apologize if our advertising offended
you in any way.
Sincerely,
Neil Mitro
Progressive Internet Service Specialist
webmaster@progressive.com
Additional Contact Information:
Progressive Insurance
Peter B. Lewis, CEO, President or Glenn M. Renwick,
President and CEO (The company operator wouldn't
confirm either one.)
6300 Wilson Mills Rd, Cleveland, OH 44143, PO Box
5070 Cleveland, OH 44101, 440.461.5000, Fax
440.446.7168 or
800.Progressive (876.6327) or (888.7764) or
webmaster@progressive.com,
or www.progressive.com
or e-mail at www.progressive.com/mail/mailfeed.asp
Federal Communications
Commission to fccinfo@fcc.gov
(See www.fcc.gov/cgb/complaintfiling.html
to see what needs to be included.)
Advertising Age, Hoag Levins, Editor, at
editor@adage.com,
711 Third Ave, New York, NY 10017 or
212.210.0100. We also e-mailed several of their
columnists who appear to write about these kinds of
campaigns. We sent them one e-mail so that they
would know who else received it. Scott Donaton
(sdonaton@crain.com),
Jack Neff (Jackneff@earthlink.net),
Cara DiPasquale (cdipasquale@crain.com)
and Alice Z Cuneo (acuneo@crain.com)
AdCritic.com, 711 3rd Avenue, New York,
NY 10017 or 888.288.5900 or custserv@adcritic.com
Other sources: tv
networks, network
shows, congress,
etc.
Updated 8/24/02.
Not another word from Progressive regarding our
letter so they must stand by their violent ad as
being humorous and entertaining. Seems that writing
them doesn't do any good. If you or someone you
know has insurance with Progressive, you might do
what they recommend and shop for another carrier
that wants male clients - Progressive obviouslly
isn't interested. Here's what one former
Progressive client did:
August 19, 2002
Glenn M. Renwick, President and CEO
Progressive Insurance
6300 Wilson Mills Road
Mayfield Village, Ohio 44143
Dear Mr. Renwick:
Today, I have sent an e-mail canceling the
motorcycle insurance I have had with Progressive
Insurance for a number of years. I have not had any
problems with either the insurance product or the
service I received from Progressive Insurance. You
might wonder, then, what prompted my decision to
cancel my policy.
My decision to terminate my relationship with
Progressive Insurance is based entirely on an
advertisement that Progressive decided to run in
its “High Expectations” campaign. I find
a number of the ads in this series clever and
humorous. For example, the ad where the parents
express disappointment at the daughter’s
decision to get her tongue pierced without
comparison-shopping achieves its humor by
exploiting the viewer’s false assumption about
the basis of the parents’ complaint. Though it
relies on our stereotypes about middle-class
parental concerns, it is both entertaining and
inoffensive.
However, I was appalled at the advertisement
that I will refer to as “Virtual Voodoo”.
In this ad, as you know, a woman--portrayed as a
smart, demanding shopper--causes a man who is
apparently a “cheating boyfriend”
embarrassment and pain by using a web site that
gives her the “instant results” of, among
other things, giving him a “hot foot”,
shrinking his head and crushing his testicles. This
is supposed to highlight Progressive Insurance
Company’s web services.
Violence against men is, like violence against
women, not a laughing matter. Nor is it a rarity.
According to research funded by the Violence
Against Women Act, well over a third of the victims
of intimate partner violence are men. Other
research, a summary of which is available at
http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm and
http://www.ejfi.org/DV/dv-7.htm, indicates that
violence by women against men accounts for more
than half of all intimate partner violence.
It is reflective of stunning insensitivity and
appalling gender bias that you could even consider
running this ad. The idea shouldn't have even made
it out of the mouth of an ad writer in a
brainstorming session. If you have trouble
understanding the issue here, it is always useful
to do a little role reversal. So, imagine that one
of your creative ad writers said this: “Why
don't we show a woman going out on her boyfriend
and then we'll have the boyfriend torturing her
through a virtual voodoo program. And, wouldn't it
be funny if, right at the end, he crushed her
nipples with a pair of pliers or maybe jabbed a
barbed rod into her crotch.” How far would
that idea go? I'm betting that, if such an ad
actually ran, the person responsible for approving
it would have gone far--all the way to the
unemployment line.
It is just amazing! I'm really stunned that
someone actually thought this was a good idea.
Fortunately, I can vote with my insurance dollars,
and I vote against Progressive. Because I only
carried motorcycle insurance (at less than a
hundred dollars a year) with Progressive, loss of
my business will not be of any direct financial
concern to you, of course. Perhaps, though, you
will understand that it is reflective of a broader
sentiment among potential customers. And I will do
what I can to let others know of Progressive’s
“progressive” attitudes.
As someone who is active in the men’s
studies community, I'm aware that this
advertisement is being discussed on various
Internet discussion groups. As the moderator of one
such group, I have promoted discussion of this ad
myself. As a professor of ethics and
political/social philosophy at The Ohio State
University who often has occasion to discuss issues
of gender bias, I will use this as an example of
insensitivity to men’s concerns and
unawareness of the problem of violence against men.
In the age of electronic communication, an
advertisement such as this has a life much longer
than its run on television and it reaches an
audience of potentially sensitive viewers much more
effectively than in the past.
Had it not been for an advertisement that I
found highly offensive and insensitive, I would
never looked for insurance elsewhere. As it
happens, I found it for less than I was paying at
Progressive. (I guess I should thank you for
prodding me to do some of the comparison-shopping
you advocate.) But even if my research had shown
that I had to pay more to get insurance from
another carrier, I would have switched. I will not
support with my consumer dollars any company that
panders to the sort of mindless “all men are
bastards”, “you go, girl” mentality
and makes light of violence against men--including
genital torture.
Sincerely,
Donald C. Hubin, Ph.D.
Department of Philosophy
The Ohio State University
Columbus, OH 43210-1365
614-292-2505
hubin.1@osu.edu
cc: Moira Lardakis, Chief Communications
Officer; Richard H. Watts, Group President of Sales
and Service; Alan R. Bauer, Group President of the
Direct Business; Bob Williams, Group President of
Agency Business; Chuck Jarrett, Chief Legal
Officer
Update: 11/17/02: Well, we still
haven't gotten a "real" response from Progressive
so we wrote Don Hubin, today, to see what he had
learned. He wrote back:
Interesting coincidence on the timing of your
message. I just saw the Progressive commercial I
was complaining about broadcast yesterday here in
Columbus, OH. It didn't have the final scene where
the "smart shopper" apparently crushes her
boyfriend's testicles with a pair of pliers. I
don't know whether that is because Progressive has
edited the commercial to make it more acceptable or
because this was a shorter version of the same
commercial.
Progressive never responded to my letter in
which I cancelled my policy and objected to the ad,
despite the fact that I sent copies to all the top
executives at the company. I'm kind of surprised by
that.
Don
(Editor: Maybe they've all been 'clipped'
and don't have the b---- to respond.)
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