Month: November 2023

Everybody Knows Flo From Progressive. Who Is Stephanie Courtney? – The New York Times

by dldamore

Everybody Knows Flo From Progressive. Who Is Stephanie Courtney? – The New York Times:

In 2022, nearly half the active property- and casualty-insurance premiums in the United States and Canada were sold by just 11 companies. Increasingly, insurance corporations attract business not by building trust between their customers and local agents, but by successfully ascribing positive characteristics to the fictional characters who anthropomorphize the companies and products in ads.

 

According to Ad Age, in 2022 the Progressive Corporation spent more than $2 billion on advertising in the United States, pouring more money into the effort than McDonald’s, Toyota or Coca-Cola. (The insurance industry’s total annual media-ad spending is estimated to be just shy of $11 billion — more than was spent by all the top beer brands combined.) 

Charles T. Munger, Much More Than Warren Buffett’s No. 2, Dies at 99 – The New York Times

by dldamore

Charles T. Munger, Much More Than Warren Buffett’s No. 2, Dies at 99 – The New York Times:

Charles Thomas Munger was born in Omaha on Jan. 1. 1924, the son of Alfred Case Munger, a lawyer, and Florence (Russell) Munger. As a boy he worked Saturdays in a grocery store then owned by Mr. Buffett’s grandfather. (Mr. Buffett worked there for a time himself, but the two did not meet until much later.) At 17, Charles went to the University of Michigan to major in mathematics, but in his sophomore year, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps.

Why Long-Term Care Insurance Falls Short for So Many – The New York Times

by dldamore

Why Long-Term Care Insurance Falls Short for So Many – The New York Times:

Only 3 to 4 percent of Americans 50 and older pay for a long-term care policy, according to LIMRA, an insurance marketing and research association. That stands in stark contrast to federal estimates that 70 percent of people 65 and older will need critical services before they die.