When most people hear the words “like a good neighbor,” their mind immediately fills in the rest of the sentence with “State Farm is there.”
State Farm has spent tens of billions of dollars on TV advertising and brand marketing to make that happen.
But programmatic media buying also has a big role to play in helping nurture leads, says Alyson Griffin, the insurance brand’s head of marketing, speaking on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
“It’s just smarter, efficient media buying,” says Griffin, who joined State Farm in 2021 after nearly four years as VP of global marketing at Intel and more than 16 years in executive roles at HP before that.
“We’ve got to make sure we’re putting our brand in the right places,” she says, “and programmatic media buying is a part of that.”
Although most marketers in the insurance category use humor and brand ambassadors to stand out – State Farm has Jake, Progressive has Flo, there’s the Geico Gecko and Allstate uses a personification of Mayhem – people typically don’t consider shopping for insurance to be a fun activity. You buy insurance when you have to.
Which is why knowing where someone is in their buyer’s journey is as important as investing in brand marketing and generating awareness.
“It’s not like you walk in the door and say, ‘Oh, I’m going to buy a million-dollar life insurance policy today’ on a whim – that doesn’t happen,” Griffin says. “We’ve got 101 years of data on how long these things take.”
And when Griffin says 101 years, that’s not an exaggeration. State Farm was founded in 1922.
“Insurance companies have a lot of data,” Griffin says. “We just match up that future demand pipeline with capturing current demand and make those measures appropriately.”
Also in this episode: Quantifying the true value of marketing, reaching gamers where they are, appealing to Gen Z, behind the scenes on how Jake from State Farm ended up hanging out with Travis Kelce’s mom at an Eagles game earlier this month and Griffin’s semi-hidden musical talent.
