The Non-Story: A Win for All... or Maybe Not

It never ceases to amaze me just how fast the news cycle really is.

Last Thursday, Allstate Insurance issued a news release on the best and worst drivers based on their zodiac sign. Virgos held the dubious distinction as the worst, while Scorpios were the best. Allstate based the results on an internal study of their own customers.

This was a complete non-story. There is absolutely no news value and the study is only on Allstate customers. But the content is interesting and bound to generate traffic. Allstate gets free attention and the news site gets traffic. A win for everyone, right?

The journalist in me scoffs at the blatant publicity for Allstate, but the PR professional in me thinks this is great way to raise more visibility for the company. I even spoke with a colleague and commented on the pointless article, but what a great idea it was to get a news mention (and potentially get picked up by Yahoo, MSNBC, Gawker and other big outlets). I considered looking at ways my company could do something similar.

What could possibly go wrong with this seemingly harmless story?

Well, hell hath no fury like a Virgo scorned.

Today, Allstate issued an apology for the study and removed the study from their online newsroom. People were vocal, threatened to not consider Allstate and thought Allstate used this information seriously when deciding whether to raise premiums or issue new policies.

I never thought this non-story would get such a hostile reaction. Allstate's PR team probably thought the same thing. I'm not really sure Allstate could have done anything different to change people's reactions either. Did people have such a negative reaction because the study came from Allstate rather than a journal or university? Multiple studies say men are better at "x" than women or women are more likely to "x" than men. None of those stories elicit an apology.

I guess the lesson is no matter what you may think is harmless, people can still get upset. Yeah, that's not really much of a lesson. Anyone else have a better take away or are people's reactions too unpredictable?