In the final Marketing From The C-Suite session at the IMG Sports Marketing Symposium ‘12, Nationwide Insurance Exec VP and Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer Matt Jauchius discussed his company's recent switch to an ad campaign with the theme, "Join the nation." Jauchius said that while the company’s recent campaigns were creative, edgy and even ran in the Super Bowl, it did not resonate enough that consumers were reliably able to connect the commercials with the company. The new campaign, he said, is taking a more authentic approach (more on that below), and is getting a 99% positive rating in the social media space.
QUICK HITS:
-- On placing the new ads in the Olympics: “We were always thinking about a couple of large sports assets to launch the new campaign. With the summer Olympics, sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. We knew it was going to be a good asset, but to have 219 million people watch and be one of the most-watched events ever, it exceeded our expectations.”
-- On which sports fit into the budget pie: “We spent about a quarter of our total buy, which is multi hundreds of millions of dollars, on sports marketing. And it’s increased over the past few years, so we see that continuing.”
-- On multi-platform budget spend: “When people talk about sports marketing, they throw around terms like ‘interactive’ and ‘integrated.’ We do a ‘go-big-or-stay-home’ strategy, which is where you go into something with surround sound.”
-- On keeping a cohesive message through different avenues: “We have models that tell us that if I put all of my money into any one thing, it’s not as good as when I get into multiple methods. And sports play a valuable role in that by complementing the other assets because of the billions of people that are passionate about it and consuming it.”
-- On the reasoning behind the new campaign: “Turns out half of the people out there don’t want a yuck and a quote. They say, ‘Look, insurance is kind of serious.’ At that time you don’t want talking animals and funny spokespeople. That’s the whole notion behind the new campaign.”
-- On what is expected from properties: “A property needs to understand my business. I do this because it’s fun, but I’m trying to sell insurance, which sounds funny, but if you don’t understand how insurance works then it’s hard to do business together. And a sports partner that just uses me as a source of writing a rights fees check, that doesn’t go very far with me. You need to have a relationship.”
-- On the marketing budget: “It’s growing. We will grow double digit more next year. The CMO and CEO relationship in any company I’ve been with is, the CMO says, ‘Give me more money and I can sell more stuff.’ And the CEO says, ‘What do I get for that spend? You’re spending too much, you marketing guys.’ So we actually invest a lot of talent in analytics. There’s a very strong correlation between sports marketing and selling insurance.”
