For a low-involvement category and a brand that is seen as too traditional, Allstate insurance needed a nontraditional way to engage new customers.

The insight: Everyday, people fill social media with seemingly harmless posts. But the more people overshare, the more they put their homes at risk of burglary. In fact, we discovered that 78% of burglars are using social media to find their next target.

As a brand that exists to protect people from life's vulnerabilities, Allstate set out to protect everyone by making this issue famous. So on New Years Day, we took over one of the most highly-anticipated college football games in history, and held the Mayhem Sale.

We found one real couple of oversharers, Matt and Shannon, and while they were away at the Sugar Bowl, we made an example of them in front of an audience of millions. Shortly after kick off, Allstate's Mayhem showed up on TV in what appeared to be their house, and started selling stuff in a real-time social fire sale.

By the end of the night, every sold out, #MayhemSale was the #1 trending topic on Twitter worldwide, and an ignored issue became a top news story in just a matter of hours. Plus, improving consumer attitudes turned into action. The campaign contributed to an unprecedented 15% lift in home policy sales the first week after the event and carried through to an 18% lift for the month.

Not only did we launch Mayhem Sale as 11 sequential TV spots inside one of the most highly-anticipated college football games in history, we maximized the viral nature of the videos with combined search, high-impact display and social media campaigns to drive scale and traffic to the e-commerce website. We combined the mass awareness of live TV and one of the largest digital sports properties with social media’s more personalized ability to drive home the importance of sharing safely within the moment.

Site traffic surged up to 8x our expectations as 1 million visitors hit us with 33 million page views and spent an average of 13 minutes on the site. And the sale was only 4 hours long. On Twitter, we achieved more than 6 organic shares for each paid impression and #MayhemSale trended #1 in the US and globally. With 95 million social impressions, an ignored issue became a top news story. And it drove business. The Mayhem Sale contributed to an 18% lift in home policy sales for the month, Allstate's best January for home sales in a decade.