In the decade leading up to the State Farm “Born to Assist” campaign, the business of selling insurance had become focused on one thing: price. Thanks to a post-recession economy and the increasingly broad adoption of Internet and mobile technology, insurance customers were shopping on price alone, without giving consideration to crucial factors like quality of service and coverage. This was a new generation of thrifty, self-reliant consumers that saw the State Farm brand as antiquated, and its network of over 18,000 insurance agents as obsolete.

Our task was to get people to rethink the value that an insurance agent could add to their tech-enabled lives. Building on the success of past work targeting young adults, We undertook increased responsibility for State Farm’s preexisting NBA sponsorships and a new, cross-generational consumer segment: Insurance “Passives,” mostly young adults, who were uninterested in changing their existing plans.

We paved a powerful strategic and creative inroad to connect with this group, leading all creative development, content creation, social engagement, distribution, and partnerships. Our primary objective: Convince NBA fans to reconsider their insurance situation by reframing State Farm agent value through the context of basketball. We decided to illustrate what an agent can do for individual consumers in a new, compelling context: the assist.

NBA fans and casual observers alike understand that great plays are built on great assists, so we used the assist to help articulate the many ways an insurance agent can set State Farm customers up for success. To personify this, we cast two-time NBA assist leader Chris Paul to play both himself and Cliff Paul, his long lost identical twin brother. Like Chris, Cliff Paul was also “born to assist”—not as a professional basketball player, but as a member of State Farm’s team of dedicated insurance agents.

We developed a wide-ranging, multichannel communications strategy to embed the campaign in contemporary culture—engaging sports celebrities, social influencers, and media partners to play along with the Cliff and Chris story. In the years to come, narrative films, broadcast integrations, court side signage, digital banners, activations at the NBA’s annual All-Star Weekend, and personal appearances by Cliff himself would help to promote the assist message and drive purchase consideration.