State Farm’s secret to making a boring company ‘break through’

Have you ever been to the Gamerhood? Part game show, part reality series, it recently wrapped its fourth season in August. Over five weekly episodes on Twitch and YouTube, the show pitted gaming creators like Kai Cenat, Ludwig, Mark Phillips, and Berleezy, against each other in a combination of gaming and IRL challenges. The third season from last summer attracted more than 23 million views. 

In September, the show went mainstream when season four landed on Prime Video. Even before that, just on YouTube and Twitch, season four was getting about 20 million views for each episode. Not too shabby for a show created by a brand. That’s right, Gamerhood is fully owned by State Farm, and it’s a key part of the brand’s marketing strategy.

State Farm’s head of marketing Alyson Griffin says that despite the unpredictability of creators and reality TV, the reward is worth any perceived brand risk.

“We believe in them,” she says. “We don’t script them. They say the things they want to say, they can do the things they want to do. And we’re in the risk business! Nobody does that in insurance, right? We’re excited about extending the reach of that for an even bigger audience.”

Some brands make funny ads. Some brands invest in entertainment IP. Some brands go deep into major sports sponsorships. State Farm utilizes all of these— and Jake of course—to firmly embed the brand in culture. It’s a flywheel of culturally relevant content across many different audiences, which has helped the company boost its net worth to $145.2 billion in 2024, up from $134.8 billion in 2023.

“There’s a sea of sameness in insurance or financial services in general,” says Griffin. “We are meticulous about creating conditions over time, with a longer view, that allow us to capture lightning-in-a-bottle moments when they make themselves available.”

Here’s how State Farm does it.

In this premium piece, you’ll learn:

• Where Gamerhood fits into State Farm’s growing brand entertainment strategy
• State Farm’s head of marketing on the secret sauce that makes a boring company “break through“
• The balance stake State Farm strikes between mainstream advertising, celebrities, sports sponsorships, and original IP
• Why embracing risk with creators is so important to brands in 2025

Nobody cares, now what?

In Spike Lee’s newest Apple TV film Highest 2 Lowest, the characters David (Denzel Washington) and his chauffeur Paul (Jeffrey Wright) are in the car. Paul pulls out a gun to deal with their situation. “What is that?” David asks, as Paul cocks it. “Insurance,” says Paul. “That’s Jake from State Farm.” 

This is what marketers call cultural relevance. When Paul says the line, it’s a joke everyone gets. It even made it to the trailer. There’s no brand partnership or product deal, just an acknowledgement of the place in pop culture that State Farm has carved out over many, many years including Super Bowl ads, major sponsorships, and celebrity ad campaigns across the NBA, NFL, and Major League Baseball.

This isn’t the first time State Farm has been involved with Apple’s entertainment. While this one was unexpected, its hilarious take on the hit show Severance was very much part of the plan. Griffin says the goal of the brand’s full court press on pop culture is relevance. 

“First of all, nobody cares about insurance,” she says. ”Nobody’s thinking about it unless something happens and they need it. They also aren’t going to statefarm.com to just casually see what their insurance carrier has to say on a random Tuesday. It’s not happening. Nobody cares. You have to break through.”

This is why we get Megan Trainor trying to be an NFL trainer for Patrick Mahomes, Jason Bateman rivaling Batman, and Arnold Schwarzenegger turning the tagline into “Like a good neighbaaaaaa!” for the Super Bowl. It’s also how we get Travis Scott teaming with Jake from State Farm to create custom varsity jackets at Coachella. That mix of names alone illustrates the various ways the brand is aiming at a variety of audiences. 

“When you break through and you’re relevant, you get earned media, talk value, and social engagement,” says Griffin. “I have to use the right talent to break through, so when you see the ad, it’s actually better, more creative, and more interesting.”

But it’s the less high-profile names that have Griffin most excited right now, and the strategy around it she says is a key to the future.

Creators are key

State Farm’s budget for Gamerhood wasn’t a big departure from what they were already spending to advertise in gaming. Griffin says it was just a matter of shifting spend from other investments that were essentially getting them a static logo on a game screen. “I just thought I could get more engagement with it than just a passive logo,” she says. The secret is investing in, and trusting, creators to do what they do best. Griffin says it can be nerve-wracking for any marketer to cede control of their brand, but so far, it has been worth it. 

Griffin says that the key to a successful partnership with creators is to be prepared to give up some control. Brand leaders must do their due diligence and vet any potential partner, but then they must let them cook.

“If you know you have the right person, because you vetted them to your brand needs, let them be them,” says Griffin. “Let them create because then it looks and is authentic.”

Cenat is one of the most popular creators and streamers on the planet. He ran a month-long Twitch stream in September that peaked at more than one million concurrent viewers and 82.5 million hours watched. He’s also one of the stars of the newest season of Gamerhood. But State Farm’s work with Cenat goes beyond the stream. Cenat also starred in the brand’s Super Bowl turned March Madness spot with Jason Bateman.

Griffin says that Cenat’s help in explaining the situation of delaying the Super Bowl ad, due to sensitivity about the severity of the Los Angeles wildfires, came from trust built over time. He worked with the brand to get on Jimmy Fallon to explain why State Farm delayed the ad spot’s rollout. “That was not what we intended to do with that spot, that’s not what he signed up for,” says Griffin. “He signed up to be in the Super Bowl, and he could have been mad about it. Instead, he helped us think strategically about how to make that transition and make it work.”

Measuring success

Looking at all the various ways State Farm is getting its brand out into the world and into culture, it can be tough to decipher how it defines success with its advertising and marketing investments. 

Griffin says that State Farm’s marketing is split across three areas: current demand, future demand, and retention. Current demand is work aimed at people who are actually in the market for insurance. “Every dollar that the current demand team spends is measured against a bound policy, so you better be effective and efficient,” she says. These are deals and promos that really show people why State Farm is a good choice for them right now. 

The bigger swings in brand building are more closely tied to the other two buckets. Future demand is about starting to build a relationship with people outside of their specific insurance needs, so when they do shift over to the “current demand” category, they have State Farm in mind. “Not $1 that we spend in future demand is measured against the bound insurance policy,” says Griffin. “It is about paving the way, firing synapses, dopamine, serotonin, attention, reach, engagement, talk, value, PR, and earned media.”

Retention is a mix of the first two, making sure the brand work makes them feel good about the company, while still offering them deals and upgrades to keep their business. 

For Gamerhood, the measurement for success is more specific. Just before the third season’s launch in August 2024, gamer Ludwig posted a TikTok clip of himself, dancing with fellow gamers Berleezy, Mark Phillips, and Kyedae. There was no State Farm or Gamerhood branding, and among the more than 2,000 comments, fans were trying to figure out why their favorite gamers were together like this. Among them was, “This gotta be State Farm Gamerhood.” 

@ludwig

✨slay 💅 #jojosiwa

♬ Karma – JoJo Siwa

For Griffin, that was the proof she needed. “I knew it right then,” she says. “Unaided with no identifying marks, the target market is anticipating why those people are together and what they’re doing. And I was like, ‘Well, we just, we won IP right there.’”

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