View this article online: https://www.insurancejournal.com/blogs/2015/11/18/389370.htm
As a millennial, it appears to me that a majority of anyone outside of this particular generational group possesses a sort of mixed-feeling consisting of fear, intrigue, obsession and annoyance when it comes to us.
It’s like we’re some sort of elusive vampiric (is that a word?) human-creature-night-dweller: only when the moon dully illuminates the night sky in its waning crescent phase do we crawl from our caves, hastily texting on our smart phones while simultaneously asking Siri where the closest pho noodle house is.
A simple search of the word millennial on Insurance Journal online yielded me plenty of results. A few of my favorite are as follows: “Millennials Aspire to Be Workplace Leaders; Seek Training”, “How to Interest Millennials in Insurance Careers”, “Study: Social Posts Provide Clues to Millennials’ Attitudes” and “In the Workplace, What Do Millennials Want?”.
It’s like we’re the actual rainbow fish and the insurance industry is scratching their chin, furrowing their brows, trying to invent the impossible bait to reel us in.
Panicked tone, voices cracking, everyone scrambling to explain the extraordinary amount of worry they have during their monthly company meetings: How do we market to millennials?!?
BIGFOOT SIGHTING—I’m a millennial, and I work (kind of) with insurance.
Correction—I work in insurance advertising. I just wanted to seem a little more exotic/extremely rare saying I worked in the actual insurance industry.
Do I know what the difference is between comprehensive general liability insurance, comprehensive liability insurance, and comprehensive personal liability insurance? Heavens no. Do I tangibly understand the content in the insurance industry-related press releases I schedule? Up for debate. My creative writing degree didn’t necessarily prepare me for the insurance industry rhetoric (or lack thereof).
But if there’s one thing I do know, it’s that my heart drops out of some part of my body it’s not supposed to when I watch my iPhone descend through the air onto the inevitable ending doom that is concrete—a slow motion, heart-breaking consequence of balancing it on top of my packed-to-the-brim purse.
Was that negligence on my part? Putting a fragile, caseless ticking-time bomb of a shattered mess iPhone on top of an already balancing act that is my bag? Well I suppose yes…but you can’t blame me for being in a rush to make it in time for Taco Tuesday happy hour deals at Mi Ranchito, dude! [End millennial use of “dude” here…I promise.]
Ok great Kelly—you’re irresponsible with your iPhone and you like to frequent happy hour deals. What does this have to do with millennials and the insurance industry?
As I performed the simple task of googling “millennials and insurance” [insert eye-roll here from my usage of Google as a verb], I received various results all in agreement with one another. I’ll say it once, I’ll say it again, I’ll say it with everyone else saying it—we don’t really care.
We don’t care about insurance. Car insurance? More like why would I get in a car accident…I’m an impeccable driver. Renter’s insurance? Um…did we invent locks just for looks or…? Oh man don’t even get me started on life insurance. Isn’t time just an invented concept and the only guarantee in life is death?
Alright I think it’s safe to say I’ve been reading too much Nietzsche. But honestly, I believe (and this is me speaking for myself) that we tend to focus on the financial now: bills that mom and dad aren’t fronting anymore, student loans, and buying ripped clothing that my mom doesn’t understand why I purchase if they are already ripped in the first place are EXPENSIVE. And more than likely, we’re newly inaugurated into the real world and don’t have the wealth of money and life experiences to know that things happen, and that we need insurance to help with those inevitable things.
And that’s just insurance in the noun that it is. When talking about the insurance industry and the possibility of millennials working in it, I retrieved some solid google results.
Basically what it came down to was this: we want to be creative. We’re willing to put in the hours (even extra if you can believe it) to be a part of something great. Innovative. With a wow factor. Applicable to our own lives.
Gosh, can’t you just feel the ground rumbling from the thousands of applicants running to San Francisco in the hopes of making their way into a tech start-up? The opportunity to be a building block for an app that allows you to have your own personal butler, someone who runs all your errands for you and delivers them right to your door? The opportunity to say yes, I work for the [insert app name here] app that allows a complete stranger to go make that horrendous Sunday-afternoon-lines-a-mile-long Costco run for you. That’s pretty cool.
But if millennials really deconstructed what they do on a daily basis in conjunction with insurance, they would be horrified at the congruency between the two.
Purchased an iPhone case? You’re insuring that if you drop your phone (whether you’re on your way to a Mexican food cantina for happy hour or not), it hopefully doesn’t break.
Slid your credit card for those $250 Ray Bans? You’re insuring the fact that now you don’t have to annoyingly squint as you’re driving into work every morning. (And you can look cool for all those babes you cruise by, too.)
Brought a jacket with you to the bars? Honestly, that’s a tough insurance policy. Because I’ll be darned if I carry that thing on my arm all night, but also I’ll be more darned if I’m cold.
Along with a jacket, you decided to wear wedge-heels with you to the bars? No, there’s no insurance there. That’s blatant recklessness—you’re going to sprain your ankle.
I don’t think insurance is boring, a waste of money or in any way a waste of my (precious) millennial time. I think it’s that moment you lock your keys in the car—you gasp out loud and twirl around from walking away from your car to realize that they’re sitting on your passenger seat, the same place you threw them subconsciously due to your 8am coffee-less state. But WAIT—you have a hide-a-key tucked away in that filthy space between your back tire and trunk.
That’s insurance.
And to have something have your back is pretty cool. (Just like that personal butler app.)
So, you brave soul who read the entirety of this piece, I ask you this: are you a millennial in the insurance industry yourself? Or are you still at your post outside, binoculars in hand and camera ready to snap that photo of Bigfoot?
[Blowing magical millennial conch shell] Gather around fellow millennials (along with anyone else out there) and let me know your thoughts in the comment box below.