Situation

State Farm faced perception issues with Millennials seeing State Farm as “insurance for my parents” and on top of not being an official NFL sponsor, the brand is outspent by competitors 2:1.

Brief

Leverage spokespeople Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes to dominate the NFL post season conversation and increase awareness and likeability with our target Millennial audience.

Objectives

Establish a strong link between the creative and the brand, drive social engagement and talk value for State Farm, and increase awareness and likeability of our most distinct brand asset, Jake from State Farm.

Throughout the 2020 NFL season, fans were buzzing about State Farm and the Super Bowl on social media. With Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes as brand spokespersons, fans were anticipating a “State Farm Bowl.” We embraced the existing fan conversation through our Team State Farm campaign, driving excitement around State Farm throughout the NFL playoffs that culminated in the brand’s first Super Bowl commercial.

Team State Farm referred to our guys Rodgers and Mahomes on the field and in our Super Bowl spot. Throughout the playoffs, fans saw Jake from State Farm work to get his guys to appear in the Big Game. It all led to our Super Bowl commercial, where we added surprising key players to the Team State Farm roster – Drake and Paul Rudd. Our commercial, shot in a behind-the-scenes style, revealed that these new team members were stand-ins for our leading Team State Farm guys.

Our goal for this campaign was to keep Jake, State Farm and our athletes at the forefront of conversation with NFL fans during the postseason, tease our involvement in the Super Bowl and reinforcing State Farm as a modern, cool brand. Through consumer research, we learned that NFL fans were already talking about a potential “State Farm Bowl” on social media with the possibility of Rodgers and Mahomes facing off in the Super Bowl. We inserted ourselves into this existing consumer conversation during the playoffs to build engagement and anticipation for our involvement in the 2/7 Super Bowl, both on the field and in our content. We prepared a multi-scenario plan for each phase of the playoffs that included entertaining content with superfan Jake from State Farm doing whatever he could to support Team State Farm and asking fans to get excited about 2/7.

Implementation

We executed nine videos that were released throughout the NFL playoffs. Not knowing the result of each game our two quarterbacks played in, we produced 20+ videos to account for each scenario week by week and were ready on standby to release the appropriate creative pending the outcome.

Timeline

Our campaign was executed across six weeks to align with the playoffs and the Super Bowl, beginning on January 9, 2021, and concluding a week after the Super Bowl on February 14, 2021.

Placement

1.) Social

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Snapchat (via Bleacher Report)

Influencers

2.) Digital

Audio/Podcast

The Ringer

ESPN

Yahoo

Stage Takeover

Custom Banners

Bleacher Report

Gridiron Heights Interstitials

Gridiron Heights Instagram Stories

Digital Banners

3.) OLV

CBS Sports

NBC Sports

Yahoo Sports

Google AdBlitz

4.) Broadcast

CBS Super Bowl LV (during Q1)

Scale

400+ media placements on a national scale.

With fan engagement at an all-time high and anticipation building for the big reveal, we unveiled the “Drake from State Farm” Super Bowl spot. Our campaign exceeded every benchmark we measured it against.

Impact

#8 on USA Today’s Ad Meter out of 57 ads

TVision’s highest Creative Attention Score of all Super Bowl spots

#5 on Forbes top Super Bowl spots

#5 on iSpot top digital share of voice

Reach

1.89 billion earned impressions

400+ total media placements showing a +3,900% increase*

585% increase* in impressions on Super Bowl Sunday

Engagement

#6 trending on Twitter during Super Bowl

#3 on Brandwatch share of mentions on Twitter

60% increase* in engagement rate on Jake’s Instagram

14.2% video completion rate and the highest engagement rate (1.36%) on Instagram

1,035% increase* in “State Farm” earned social mentions

509% increase* in “Jake from State Farm” earned social mentions

*Compared to 2020 Super Bowl efforts