Copyranter points us to Joel Spolsky, a self-professed geek, who was miffed by a recent Traveler’s Insurance ad that was headlined, “To catch a geek, you have to think like a geek” and went on to say, “Fashion sense aside, today’s high-tech criminals are evolving constantly… Give your independent agent a call, and spend your time taking your business to the next level. Instead of worrying about a crook in ill-fitting pants.”
Joel argues it’s wrong for Traveler’s to view geeks as some sort of security-related insurance risk and the whole geek versus non-geek thing is so high school. He continues by questioning whether insurance agents are really any more capable than geeks to protect a company’s security and that the ad attacks the very people whose job it is to implement sais protection.
Joel drives the point home writing, “Maybe a know-nothing in the White House has given you the idea that it’s somehow acceptable now to poke fun of geeks and nerds, in big two-page ad spreads on the inside front cover of a magazine for founders of startups. But you know what, morons? You probably forgot that most of the people that read Inc. are geeks. And we buy insurance. Lots of insurance. Like me. And in fact I used to buy it from you. But not any more.” Touche.
