Allstate insurance has committed to multicultural marketing, adopting a social-first strategy to engage the LGBT, Hispanic and Asian/Indian communities.
Georgina Flores, vice president, integrated marketing communications at Allstate Insurance shared three lessons and case studies.
Lesson One—LGBT
“Take a stand and embrace all that follows,” she said at the ANA Multicultural Conference. “It’s our duty to be advocates; to stand up for segments that are underrepresented, and frankly mistreated, even if it brings [unwanted] attention to our brand.”
The insights it learned in the LGBT community were that they are skeptical of support from big companies that can seem really superficial, especially insurance companies.
“You have to share a lot of personal information. There are complicated insurance laws,” Flores said. “We had challenges, but we learned that companies that get it right have much more loyalty so we realized that we really had to get it right.”
To do that it turned to its long-term, highly recognizable slogan, “You’re in Good Hands,” paired with the holding hands logo and the simple act of holding hands. Allstate understood the fear that same sex couples have of holding hands in public.
One team member shared the experience of being on a two-week trip and never having held hands in public.
That insight led to the new messaging, “Everything worth holding onto is worth protecting. Everyone deserves to feel protected and safe no matter who they are. Everyone deserves to be in good hands,” she said.
The campaign started with print and out-of-home.
“We knew we had a good campaign, but we didn’t realize the response we would get,” Flores said. “We got more unpaid impressions than paid. We had LGBT media talking about Allstate being an advocate for the community and to switch to Allstate. We got letters and emails from customers. What happened was really the definition of something going viral. We decided we had to do more.”
And, that it did. It went social, working with popular LGBT advocate, musician and songwriter Eli Lieb. He wrote a song, “Safe in my Hands,” for Allstate that was expressed through video. The supporting hashtag #OutHoldingHands was for people to share photos. Watch the video:
“The video received over 10 million views online, but what was really meaningful for us is that Allstate was named among the 10 overall top brands among the LGBT community,” Flores said.
Adding to that Allstate launched lgbt.allstateonline.com as a virtual chain of people holding hands. Some 2.2 million participated so far.
Lesson Two-Hispanic
The lesson here was to leverage the equity Allstate had even if it meant taking a risk.
We all know Mayhem, the Allstate advertising character played by Dean Winters, who is a metaphor for disasters that might befall anyone. The campaign began about five years ago and after it was clear that it took off, the challenge was how to translate the Mayhem charter to the Hispanic market.
“There is no literal translation of Mayhem,” Flores said. “In the general market he personifies all the bad things that can happen. But Hispanics blame circumstances, not a person.”
There in lied the challenge, which led Allstate to create “Que Mala Suerte.” The character is a Spanish man where an unfortunate set of circumstances create the chaos, not the man himself. To get the hilarity of the campaign, watch the video:
“We saw four times the engagement with his fans and followers than the industry average,” she said.
Fast forward to the 2014 World Cup, a cluttered advertising environment where Allstate worried that it wouldn’t gain traction if it didn’t “own” anything. The insight for its #MulticulturalMarketing was that Hispanics believe that both skill and luck are required in soccer.
“We had lots of debate and some unhappy meetings, but we decided this was the perfect place to instigate trouble with soccer players. In social media, Mala Suerte encouraged fans to send bad luck to their team’s rivals and to demonstrate how unpredictable luck can be.
“He provided real-time video responses for all matches and took credit for the follies on the field, like when Brazil scored on itself and Spain’s early elimination from the tournament,” she said.
In another video, for the championship game, Allstate had cat food drip into two bowls labeled with the two teams. The bowl chosen by a black cat would cause that team to lose the match.
“Mala Suerte was there from the kick off from first match to the final whistle in last game,” she said.
The results were great. Was the No. 1 trending hashtag in the U.S, during the opening World Cup match, it drove 20,000 new fans on Facebook and Twitter in six weeks, site traffic increased 500%, but perhaps most importantly, insurance quotes were up 20%.
Lesson Three—Asian/Indian
The challenge here was how to introduce Allstate to the Asian/Indian marketplace. This group is the fastest growing ethnic population in the U.S., has higher income compared to other segments and spends more than the general market. They are insurance savvy and like the personal touch of an agent.
“It’s music to an insurance companies ears,” Flores said.
“We needed to make the brand relevant by showing them we know how they truly live, that they are bi-cultural, succeeding in U.S., but holding on to tradition. That they are living a better life in the U.S. and that’s a direct result of their own effort and they understand value of all they have to lose,” she said.
The messaging that emerged was that “we understand what you have achieved because of your hard work and we can protect what you have,” she said. The creative, print and video, picked up design elements from Indian textiles and cultural nuances from the traditional spices the culture uses.
“We demonstrated that Allstate agents respect tradition and will be good partners,” she said. “We increased brand consideration and are exceeding online metrics that we put in place.”
Multicultural Lessons—Key Takeaways
- Know your consumer. Know your brand. Know your shared value
- Take a stand. Embrace all that follows
- Leverage your equity, even if it means taking a risk.
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