Great Branding: Liberty Mutual Insurance, and Actually Knowing What You’re Insured For

Branding, like sex, money or religion, is simple but not easy. To brand, you first have to understand what your customer cares about. They may not even know themselves, but you have to. Second, you have to explain how you address it — what do you do that solves a problem, or provides something they want? Finally, you have to clearly communicate the offer in a way your customers will notice and remember despite the waterfall of competing advertising they live in every day.

These challenges are the same no matter what you’re selling, up to and including very expensive professional services. Or, in this case, an incredibly boring product — car insurance.

Liberty Mutual does a fantastic job of this with a commercial for a feature called Coverage Compass, that apparently helps people understand what they’re covered for and what they’re not. And, of course, helps them buy more coverage and spend more money. But the whole product is based on a single, kind of persistent problem with insurance — customers don’t understand what they’re getting, or how it works, and it bothers them. Here’s the commercial:

The casting is fantastic — just the right mix of sweetness, sarcasm and snark from the actress. It takes a deft touch and real talent to make a commercial about insurance sort of fun, but they do. The script is great, too. But the branding is brilliant — here is a real-life scenario everyone can relate to, and a problem everyone worries about, even if they are well-insured. The issue is identified, and described, and a solution is presented. In thirty seconds. This charming, very authentic commercial identifies something that matters to the customer, and addresses it in a credible, appealing way. Nice work.