Snoopy Has Been Fired by MetLife

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: The Wall Street Journal.

By Leslie Scism

[email protected]
http://twitter.com/lesliescism

Updated Oct. 20, 2016 8:33 a.m. ET

MetLife decided earlier this year to part with most of its U.S. life-insurance business. Now it is cutting ties with Snoopy. ... The 148-year-old company first used the Peanuts’ cartoon character in advertising 31 years ago as it tried to connect with U.S. consumers. Snoopy, created by cartoonist Charles Schulz, now appears on everything from MetLife blimps to the company’s marketing and sales materials.

But that need to reach consumers will shrink when MetLife spins off the bulk of its U.S. life-insurance business in the first half of 2017. Afterward MetLife will sell mostly to corporate clients in the U.S., including life-, dental- and other insurance to employers for their workers as well as annuities to pension plans. It also has a large international life-insurance business.
....

After 2016 MetLife will no longer contract to use blimps for aerial coverage of golf tournaments, football games and other events, and is reviewing future sponsorship activities, the company said.

The decision to shed Snoopy is the latest in a series of moves made by MetLife to part ways with a life-insurance operation that was once central to the company’s rise as a nationwide giant. It separately agreed in February to sell a network of about 4,000 sales people to Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.


Read more: http://www.wsj.com/articles/snoopy-has-been-fired-by-metlife-1476966706

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With all that's going on in the world, this is LBN? Yes. The only way you haven't seen a MetLife commercial is by not watching any television at all. The jingle is the instantly recognizable tune from A Charlie Brown Christmas, first aired 51 years ago.

You know you want to see it:

This will make the network TV news tonight.

Not only that, but the demise of the blimp is sure to take all the excitement out of televised golf.

How can anyone not like The Wall Street Journal.?

We now return LBN to articles about another cartoonish character with something odd on its head.

[brooklynite]

1. There's a more appropriate episode:

...and the color is topical.

[Wilms]

2. Graphic Warning...

[sinkingfeeling]

3. No oooooooooooo! Not Snoopy!

[mahatmakanejeeves]

5. It's a dog-eat-dog world.

The swag that MetLife hands out at health benefits fairs is sure to skyrocket in value.

[sinkingfeeling]

8. Yes, I have several from my university's health fairs across the years.

[Mc Mike]

6. All that fast living and sex scandals made the company part ways with their controversial

spokescartoon.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. Sort of like Ryan Lochte, but with fur. NT

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

9. Good

As much as I love Schultz, I hated his decisions to sell his characters out so much for ads.

[Auggie]

10. I never cared for the Met Life / Peanuts match-up ...

Seemed very forced, and led to a lot of banal advertising.

[TonyPDX]

11. That's okay. MetLife is like the "family axe" handed down for generations.

The handle has been replaced eight times and the head isn't original, but it's still the "family axe."

Might as well put it up for sale.

[In_The_Wind]

13. Kick

[Throckmorton]

14. Well, there is still Dolly Madison Zinger's.

Which, as a kid growing up in Portland Maine in the 60's and 70's did not exist on our store shelves.