State Farm cracks Top 50 in new reputation ranking

William Shatner stars in State Farm's turkey-fryer safety video, "Eat, Fry, Love," which debuted on YouTube. (Screen grab)

BLOOMINGTON – State Farm Insurance Cos. is touting its first-ever ranking on a Top 50 list of companies with the best corporate citizenship reputations.

The Bloomington-based insurer is No. 46 on the 2011 Corporate Social Responsibility Index. The index is created using data collected by the Reputation Institute’s 2011 Global Pulse Study and analyzed by the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship.

The data measures public perception about the corporate citizenship, governance and workplace of more than 200 companies. No. 1 on the CSR Index: Publix Super Markets Inc.

State Farm has been providing the data used to generate the index for years, but only recently has the company begun to seek more public notice for its efforts in the corporate-responsibility arena, said Kellie Clapper, assistant vice president for public affairs at State Farm.

“It’s just now to the point where you have to talk about what you’re doing in this space, because customers are really demanding it,” Clapper said. “Before they do business with you, they want to know what you stand for.”

Also moving the needle, she said, is State Farm’s decision to pick a few strategic areas to devote resources. They include an ongoing teen-driver safety initiative, for which State Farm has funded research, analyzed its own claims data and helped develop interventions and training programs to reduce accidents.

Clapper said the insurer is also getting more creative with its public education efforts. She pointed to last week’s debut of a turkey-fryer safety video, a potentially boring topic made more attention-grabbing because it starred eccentric “Star Trek” icon William Shatner.

“State Farm debuting on the top 50 list at this time is noteworthy,” Katherine V. Smith, executive director of the Carroll School of Management Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College, said in a statement. “The public is asking more of companies and that State Farm is joining the ranks of this highly-regarded group of firms is a terrific accomplishment for the company.”

Ryan Denham can be reached at ryan@wjbc.com.