State Farm Names Wisconsin Mom Chief Worrying Officer
Ousted CEO replaced by worried mother of 10-month-old
BLOOMINGTON, IL. — In a move that sent shock waves through the insurance world Thursday, the executive board of State Farm Insurance Company unanimously voted to fire long-time CEO Michael L. Tipsord and replace him with a Milwaukee-area mother whose baby has a fever right now.
After forming a secret alliance with the Board of Directors, Chief Marketing Officer Alan Ogleman hacked into Tipsord’s LinkedIn account late Wednesday night and unchecked the “I currently work here” box next to his State Farm CEO title.
“Mr. Tipsord is a great businessman” said Ogleman, “but he was super laid back. He never worried about anything, so he couldn’t connect with customers on an emotional level.”
It is the hope of Ogleman and the State Farm board that Rebecca Nguyen, a self-proclaimed “professional worrier” from Milwaukee, can lead their 65,000-employee company to worldwide dominance in 2016.
“People buy insurance because they’re worried as hell. Our goal is to tap into that worry, bring it to life, and use it to paint terrifying pictures in our customer’s minds. Then, and only then, can we dominate Geico.”
Nguyen, a self-employed freelance copywriter and new mother of a 10-month old son, has over 30 years of experience as an excessive worrier.
“She is truly a diamond in the rough” said Ogleman.
“Thanks to her innovative worrying insights, we already have seventeen new policies in development that people don’t even know they need.”
Nguyen specializes in child-related worry, but her natural talents and worrying expertise extend into areas of finance, health, personal development, spirituality, and End of Days-scenarios.
“The key is pushing your limits” said Nguyen in a recent interview for Parenting magazine.
“Where other moms worry about things like fevers, kidnappings, and mass shootings, I take it a step farther. It’s all about using your natural ability to worry and letting it run completely out of control.”
Nguyen begins by asking “What if?” and riffs from there:
“What if my baby’s fever spikes in the night while we’re sleeping, and gets so high that he suffers brain damage, and because he’s now brain-damaged he won’t know enough to cry to wake me up so I can help him?
What if I do wake up and realize his fever has grown dangerously high, so I scramble into the car to take him to the ER and drive really fast and accidentally hit a kid who was walking in the road at night without reflective clothing?
What if I try to pull the kid I hit into the car with me since I’m on my way to the hospital anyway, but I can’t lift him and my baby is screaming and I have to make a choice?
What if I leave the kid dying in the street to save my baby and the police come for me at the hospital and haul me off to jail for a hit-and-run and the only time I see my son is during prison visits and he grows up to write a best-selling tell-all memoir about having a murderer for a mother and going to see her in prison on the weekends?”
“She’s a master” said Ogleman.
“To think that we wasted decades under traditional leadership, selling traditional insurance policies. With Rebecca as our CWO, we have an unlimited number of plausible scenarios to terrify the public. But what’s even more special is how we can monetize those fears with new insurance policies for events that will never, ever happen.”
State Farm’s premier policy debut under the new leadership paradigm is their Hit And Run policy, which is based on Nguyen’s irrational fear of accidentally running over someone else’s kid while taking her own kid to the ER.
“Most of our customers had never considered such a horrific possibility, but now that they have, they’re worried, and they want coverage.”
When asked to comment on his termination, his unlikely replacement, and the future of the insurance industry as we know it, Tipsord commented from his Tiburon villa:
“I’m not too worried about it.”
