Why State Farm Has Made a Massive Marketing Investment in Gaming

If gaming gives you an extra life, take it.

Last year, State Farm turned to its Gamerhood Challenge show and Twitch streamers to help it connect with younger consumers. That series dropped a group of gamers in a virtual neighborhood and made them compete in challenges featuring pitfalls that State Farm would cover.

The show racked up 10 million views and more than 52,000 active participants—getting help from its gamer participants and even its character Jake From State Farm’s social media accounts. That made it it successful enough for State Farm to reconsider its strategy altogether. 

Though this year’s Super Bowl was played in a stadium bearing State Farm’s name, the company passed on a Big Game ad for the second year in a row. Instead, it set up shop within the metaverse, found its home on TikTok and increased its investment in the gaming sector for this year’s The Gamerhood Challenge 2.

“As an insurance brand, we’re not endemic to the gaming space and we were unsure if there would be a lot of engagement and views from our original Gamerhood series,” said Alyson Griffin, vp of marketing at State Farm. “We were stepping out and taking a big risk, but we had way exceeded our expectations.”

Airing each Thursday in June on Twitch and YouTube, the series continues the real-world obstacle theme and adds more gamers, streamers and content creators to the mix. Hosted by former Titan Games host Alex “Goldenboy” Mende and comedian Barbara Dunkelman, this year featured a roster including Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, Jessica Blevins, Ludwig, Typical Gamer, Krystalogy and 2022 holdovers Berleezy, ImDontai and BlackKrystel. 

Even Jake From State Farm—played by actor Kevin Miles—pitched in and helped out.

“Gen Zers aren’t looking and seeking out insurance carrier information,” Griffin said. “By inserting our brand and Jake from State Farm in a fun and engaging way, we were able to get across a little ‘edutainment.’”

Not playing around

State Farm was so confident in The Gamerhood’s second installment that it built a 50,000-square-foot set featuring hydraulic lifts, catapults, vacuums and other devices and obstacles for its stars to navigate. There are four gaming areas set up as tiny homes, and the entire neighborhood requires 44 cameras, nearly 175 team members and more than 100 screens to create each episode. 

State Farm also created interactive games and trivia for viewers and gave away prizes including gift cards worth up to $500. The Gamerhood’s players, meanwhile, are each competing for a $100,000 donation to the nonprofit organization of their choice. Even runners up receive $10,000 for their causes, which include Habitat for Humanity, Feeding America, Junior Achievement and The American Red Cross.

Thus far, the investment has paid off. Where last year’s debut episode drew 340,000 viewers on State Farm’s Twitch stream, this year’s garnered close to 500,000, with another 36,000 streaming on YouTube. Through the first four episodes of the series, State Farm is averaging more than 482,000 viewers on Twitch and another 27,000 on YouTube—none of which includes those viewing the streams of the participants themselves.

But is it necessarily a better result than State Farm would see from more traditional marketing channels?

“For engagement, chatter, growing, Jake’s fan base, growing affinity to our brand with a younger generation … oh my gosh, yes,” Griffin said. “We are thinking very differently than simply television commercials.”

The cheat code

State Farm exists in a crowded market of insurers that all want their spokesperson/character drilled into the public consciousness. Last year, State Farm and its affiliates spent $1.01 billion on advertising. That’s more than the $950 million than Allstate and the soothing timbre of Dennis Haysbert, but less than the nearly $1.3 billion spent by Geico and its gecko or the $1.7 billion Progressive spent on the Flo cinematic universe.

But State Farm’s foray into popular technology and the culture surrounding it has separated it and Jake from their policy-peddling contemporaries. State Farm has sponsored gaming’s Rocket League Championship Series and League of Legends. It also sponsored esports athlete and Fortnite streamer DrLupo in 2019 before placing Jake himself into NBA2K22’s The City.

In the metaverse, it opened State Farm Park in iHeartLand and introduced itself to 5.5 million players, including 3.2 million unique visitors, 1.6 million from Roblox and 1.3 million from Fortnite. Its forays into social media replaced a Super Bowl ad with its 2023 Big Game #StateFarmStadiumChallenge with TikToker Khaby Lame that produced 220 million views on Lame’s TikTok in seven days and got 18,100 to comment for a chance to be in one of his future posts.

State Farm’s digital presence grew from logo sponsorships of gamers and platforms into interaction with fans, trivia hosting and familiar elements like its jingle, red shirt and khaki pants popping up in Roblox and elsewhere. Jake From State Farm made an appearance at TwitchCon last fall (though he also spread the love to BravoCon for non-gamers). It’s still trying to sell insurance, but it’s found there’s multiple ways to make that pitch and audiences surprisingly willing to listen.

“We have a relevance obstacle to overcome because no one, not even older folks, are thinking about or dying to engage with insurance,” Griffin said. “We think we’ve cracked the code on not being too out of bounds, but attracting people in ways that are still authentic to who we are.”