Metlife tells Snoopy after a 30-year run that his services are no longer needed.
MetLife is firing Snoopy. After more than 30 years of appearing in print ads, TV commercials, marketing materials and on the sides of MetLife’s blimps at sports events, the company is showing the door to the “Peanuts” character, one of the most recognizable figures in U.S. pop culture.
No more big-nosed beagle in the flight cap and goggles chasing the Red Baron on MetLife’s airship. No more TV ads featuring Snoopy navigating life’s treacherous waters to sell insurance. Snoopy hitting a homer? Out.
MetLife, one of the largest insurance companies in the world with 100 million customers worldwide, said the move is part of an effort to update its corporate emblem for international competition.
The chief marketing officer for MetLife, Esther Lee, announced the change Thursday, saying that Snoopy and other “Peanuts” characters like Charlie Brown were adopted as symbols in 1985 to make the company seem “more friendly and approachable during a time when insurance companies were seen as cold and distant.”
“We have great respect for these iconic characters,” Lee said in the announcement. “However, as we focus on our future, it’s important that we associate our brand directly with the work we do and the partnership we have with our customers.”
Already, the company’s website shows no sign of the dog whose adventurous daydreams won the hearts of generations of Americans, in the Charles M. Schulz comic strip and its spinoffs.
Schulz died in 2000 but his comic strips from 1950 to 2000 are still in syndication.
During global research by the company, when consumers were asked about associations with the characters, “what you see popping very high are things like ‘is a good friend,’ and ‘is approachable,’” Lee said. But the research shows customers did not associate the “Peanuts” characters with leadership, responsibility and other traits.
The research also showed the characters did not affect interest in purchasing insurance.
“We asked, point blank, our customers on a scale of 1 to 10, if we decided to move away from using the characters, how would you feel, with one being very unhappy and 10 being very happy,” Lee said. Eighty percent of consumers responded with answers between 3 and 7.
“People are indifferent from us moving away from the characters,” Lee said, adding that more than 1,000 other brands around the world use Peanuts characters in their marketing. “They basically don’t care.”