Two Hypes. One Hypothesis.

The outside world is combating fake-slash-BS news. Recall (below) The Denver Post, which had to write its own post to point out it had no ties to a post written by ‘the Denver Guardian’, which BTW doesn’t exist.

Now, a month after Mark Zuckerberg insisted Facebook has/wants nothing to do with fake news, he’s realizing his platform is part to blame and is detailing how he plans to deal with it. Some logical moves include (1) working with fact-checking groups to identify bogus stories and (2) allowing users to flag posts as ‘it’s a fake news story’ to warn others. So while Facebook is combatting its serious fake news problem, who’s combatting our industry’s hype problem?

H1: “Insurance is a trillion dollar industry’.

Yes, but the fragmented kind; the kind you see in the food industry. Now, how excited does one get to the sound of another saying “I wan’t to open up a restaurant”?

So much for great expectations. Let’s try straight expectations?

H2: ‘The insurance industry touches millions of lives’. 

Yeah.

NO.

–> Pope Francis touches millions of lives.

–> Walt Disney touched millions of lives.

–> Sully touched millions of lives.

People have the power to touch people. In contrast, wars, terrorism, diseases, and catastrophes, to name a few, also touch millions of lives. The common denominator? These are all people, events or things that trigger emotion.

Emotion is how the high fashion industry accounts for its high margins.

There’s no emotion in insurance; it’s a rational purchase .

So when in most-going-on-all industries brands look to translate a ‘want’ to a ‘need’, in insurance the need is already there. Embrace it. Embrace boring, because there’s money to be made in being boring. Know who else gets boring? SoFi, Uber and TurboTax. All are low on aspirations, high on functions, when it comes to their value propositions.

This stands in complete contradiction to some new entrants that focus too much of their attention in creating unnecessary upsides to purchasing insurance. Let’s face it. everyone’s plan A is to not purchase insurance. Plan B is to not need insurance. Plan C is to purchase insurance and not use insurance. Plan D is to purchase insurance and fraud the heck of it. That’s one reason why the bar in insurance is this low. Cue: you don’t need to try too hard. Keep it rational.

H3: ‘The value chain in the insurance market is transforming rapidly.’

In general, I’m not a fan of these all-encompassing-way-too-broad statements, but for now, I’ll let this be the hypothesis.

All in all, I prefer hype to ignorance.