• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Neal Schaffer-Social Media Speaker, Author, Consultant, Educator and InfluencerNeal Schaffer-Social Media Speaker, Author, Consultant, Educator and Influencer

Maximize Your Social at the official site of social media keynote speaker Neal Schaffer

  • Meet Neal
  • Influencer Marketing
  • Speaking
  • Consulting
  • Books
  • Blog
  • Hire Neal
  • Nav Social Menu

    • LinkedIn
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram
    • RSS
    • Email

Farmers Insurance Social Media Marketing Case Study: Utilizing FarmVille for Facebook Brand Awareness

by Neal Schaffer

October 20, 2010 By Neal Schaffer 4 Comments

Farmers-Insurance-Social-Media-Marketing-Case-Study-Utilizing-FarmVille-for-Facebook-Brand-Awareness-600x600-V2
There are many tools that are available to companies in social media marketing, but one that you don’t hear about often is social gaming, especially when these games are played directly on popular social networking sites like Facebook.  Farmers Insurance earlier this week announced a new campaign that would put their virtual airship on the screens of everyone playing the popular social game FarmVille, which was reported to be 80 million users earlier this year.

I had the opportunity to interview Ryon Harms, the Director of Social Media for Farmers Insurance, and get his input on the significance of this campaign for Farmers as well as what other social media marketers can learn from his experience.  Here’s what I learned from the talk and the campaign itself, which was the brainchild of Marc Zeitlin, Vice President of eBusiness for Farmers.

1.) Any Social Media Campaign Needs to Be Aligned with Your Brand

Farmers Insurance was founded in 1928 by actual farmers who felt they were under-served and paid too much for insurance.  100 years later, Farmers is now serving virtual farmers on FarmVille.  Farmers Insurance came to the conclusion that partnering with Farmville would actually align very nicely with their brand and who they are.  Farmers Insurance has always been seen as a conservative company, and now they wanted to show that they were in touch with their clients, had an amazing internal culture, and cared a great deal about their customers.  Social media was seen as a perfect channel to use to get the word out about who they were.  And the choice of FarmVille was a natural.

2.) You Need to Be Where Your Audience Is

I was confused why Farmers would choose FarmVille, which I always thought of being something that a younger demographic who had no need for insurance were playing.  According to Farmers, though, the largest deomgraphic group playing FarmVille are actually stay-at-home moms.  Since they believe that this population is in charge of a majority of the insurance buying decisions in any given household, FarmVille was a perfect outlet to reach out to their potential customers on.

3.) Be the Pioneer, Not the Follower

Harms mentioned that this was only the first of many social media campaigns, and that social gaming is still something that they will continue to work with.  Farmers, who were late to the social media bandwagon of Facebook and Twitter, see social gaming as becoming a much more popular thing in the future, and they want to be the pioneers here.  No doubt that support from the executive team as well as the efforts of Zeitlin, who did not have a background in social media, to try to do things differently and do something new were instrumental in making Farmers a real pioneer in the space.

4.) Approach Social Gaming as an Opportunity

I was wondering how it was working with Zynga.  Apparently, it was easy for Farmers to work with them and align their strategy with that of Zynga to ensure that Farmers was able to build awareness while respecting the integrity of the game and the people playing it.  Social gaming is an opportunity, like mobile, that are only going to gain in importance, yet so few companies seem to have a strategy on.  Now is the perfect time to approach social gaming as an opportunity.

5.) Compliance Issues for a Regulated Industry?

There are many companies in regulated industries like Farmers who are trying to stay as far away from social media as possible.  It was encouraging to see that Farmers agreed to do this social campaign, yet I wondered if there were any internal departments worrying about potential compliance issues.  According to Harms, FarmVille is a virtual world, so the only compliance issues that Farmers had was actually making sure that they played by the rules of the game!  Even if your company is in a regulated industry, there are things that can be done in social media to help your company build brand awareness.

6.) Social Media Does Not Exist in a Vacuum

Farmers is not putting an airship on FarmVille for the sake of advertising in a virtual world.  They are, in parallel, running a campaign on their Facebook Fan Page which will allow the winners, chosen from those that “Like” their page, to have a ride in the actual Farmers Airship, pictured above, which is apparently the largest flying aircraft in the world.  Gamers on FarmVille will be taken directly to the Farmers Fan Page by clicking on the virtual airship protecting the virtual crops.  By integrating FarmVille and Facebook with their promotional campaign, the result will not only be much greater awareness by those playing Farmville as well as Facebook users in general; it will also have a lasting effect of having a Fan Page with tens of thousands of present customers and future clients that can now be tapped into in the future.

So what have the results been of the campaign so far?  The Facebook sweepstakes started 2 weeks ago, at which time Farmers had 6,500 Facebook fans.  That number last week swelled to 14,000 with the introduction of the sweepstakes.  After the FarmVille campaign started on Monday, that number has jumped to more than 37,500 fans.  That doesn’t necessarily equate to more revenues, but in an industry where Geico has mindshare with their entertaining commercials and Allstate and State Farm have more sales, Farmers has made a statement by setting up shop and allowing their fans quick access to quotations, searching local dealers, and even the ability to ask a question directly on their Fan Page Wall.

Where does Farmers go from here?  “Obviously we want to be number one in social media out of all of the insurance brands,” said Harms, “but more importantly, we want to be considered a leading social brand, a company that would be at the top of the Social Media Brand Engagement Report put out by Altimeter.”

It is refreshing to see a big brand who understands where they are going and where they need to be with their social strategy.

What do you think of this social campaign?

Image courtesy of Flickr / praytino

Looking for more Facebook marketing advice? Check these posts out!

  • Here’s What Your Facebook Posts Should Look Like in 2018
  • How to Sort Your Facebook News Feed
  • What are Facebook Dark Posts and How to Use Them
  • How to Write Facebook Comments That Trigger Positive Feedback
  • Ways to Overcome the 20% Text Rule for Facebook Ads
  • Facebook Mid-Roll Video Ads: Are They the Right Call?
  • Understanding Those Mysterious Facebook Spam Messages You May Be Receiving
  • Is Your Facebook Business Page DEAD?
  • Why Your Facebook Live Videos Aren’t Working
  • Facebook Ads Placement: A Simple Guide to Getting It Right
  • Facebook Ads Text Limit Rule Change: What You Should Know
  • How to Add an Email Subscription Form to Facebook
  • The Difference Between Facebook Profile, Pages and Groups
  • Facebook Marketing Strategy for Small and Medium Businesses
  • 10 Rules for Effective Facebook Marketing

Join my newsletter!

Nealschaffer

Subscribe to get my latest content by email as soon as I publish it.

Success! I'll send you updates as soon as I publish them!

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

Don't worry: You can unsubscribe at any time. Powered by ConvertKit
  • Bio
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • Pinterest
  • Latest Posts
Neal Schaffer

Neal Schaffer

Neal Schaffer is a leading authority on helping businesses through their digital transformation of sales and marketing through consulting, training, and helping enterprises large and small develop and execute on social media marketing strategy, influencer marketing, and social selling initiatives. President of the social media agency PDCA Social, Neal also teaches digital media to executives at Rutgers University, the Irish Management Institute (Ireland), and the University of Jyvaskyla (Finland). Fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, Neal is a popular keynote speaker and has been invited to speak about digital media on four continents in a dozen countries. He is also the author of 3 books on social media, including Maximize Your Social (Wiley), and in late 2019 will publish his 4th book, The Business of Influence (HarperCollins), on educating the market on the why and how every business should leverage the potential of influencer marketing. Neal resides in Irvine, California but also frequently travels to Japan.
Neal Schaffer

@nealschaffer

Social Media Author, @RBSExecEd & @IMI_Ireland Educator, Keynote Speaker. New #influencermarketing book: https://t.co/Z9bWWfapJ6
Why We Need More Visibility Into The Social Media Analytics Algorithms We Use https://t.co/FeVucCTOcP #smm… https://t.co/bIbFwHZtk2 - 55 mins ago
Neal Schaffer
Neal Schaffer
Neal Schaffer

Neal Schaffer

Neal Schaffer

Neal Schaffer

Neal Schaffer

Latest posts by Neal Schaffer (see all)

  • How to Get Verified on Instagram – The Latest Advice and Analysis - January 31, 2019
  • Seven Helpful Social Media Writing Tips For Businesses - January 24, 2019
  • How to Make Money on Instagram? Here’s 9 Different Ideas to Chew On - January 21, 2019
  • 7 Instagram Mistakes That Kill Your Online Business - January 17, 2019
  • How to Reach a Whole New Demographic Using Social Media - January 16, 2019

About Neal Schaffer

Neal Schaffer is a leading authority on helping businesses through their digital transformation of sales and marketing through consulting, training, and helping enterprises large and small develop and execute on social media marketing strategy, influencer marketing, and social selling initiatives. President of the social media agency PDCA Social, Neal also teaches digital media to executives at Rutgers University, the Irish Management Institute (Ireland), and the University of Jyvaskyla (Finland). Fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, Neal is a popular keynote speaker and has been invited to speak about digital media on four continents in a dozen countries. He is also the author of 3 books on social media, including Maximize Your Social (Wiley), and in late 2019 will publish his 4th book, The Business of Influence (HarperCollins), on educating the market on the why and how every business should leverage the potential of influencer marketing. Neal resides in Irvine, California but also frequently travels to Japan.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Neal Schaffer says

    August 9, 2012 at 6:03 pm

    Hi Marianna,

    Farmers Insurance continues to do progressive activities in social media, and last I heard they are doing well. Check out what they recently did at NASCAR:

    http://www.lostremote.com/2012/04/12/farmers-insurance-becomes-first-to-put-hashtag-on-a-racecar-for-nascars-texas-motor-speedway/

    Reply
  2. Justice Wordlaw says

    October 25, 2010 at 3:51 pm

    Wow I really like how Farmers Insurance really stepped up there social media stand point and got involved. I feel it was a genius idea to tie in there farmers company into farmville which is a huge thing on facebook right now. I did not know that stay at home moms played that game but as you think about it though it does make quite some sense. I feel that they made a very good decision in doing this and I see Farmers sales growing very good int he 4th quarter and also the 1st. Great Post!!

    Reply
    • nealschaffer says

      October 25, 2010 at 10:00 pm

      Thanks Justice…and I agree with your analysis 100%. It will be fun to see how Farmers does after this campaign.

      Reply
      • Marianna says

        August 9, 2012 at 1:36 pm

        Is there any update about results for farmers insurance ?

        Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

FOLLOW ME!

Follows
  • Twitter
    222k Followers
  • LinkedIn
    40.8k Followers
  • Pinterest
    29.8k Followers
  • Instagram
    16.3k Followers
  • Facebook
    10.7k Followers
  • YouTube
    244 Followers

COME SEE ME SPEAK LIVE!

COME SEE ME SPEAK LIVE!

PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK!

PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK!

LOOKING TO BETTER LEVERAGE LINKEDIN?

LOOKING TO BETTER LEVERAGE LINKEDIN?

USE THE SOCIAL MEDIA DASHBOARD THAT I USE!

USE THE SOCIAL MEDIA DASHBOARD THAT I USE!

LEARN THE LATEST ABOUT INFLUENCER MARKETING

LEARN THE LATEST ABOUT INFLUENCER MARKETING

Join my newsletter!

Nealschaffer

Subscribe to get my latest content by email as soon as I publish it.

Success! I'll send you updates as soon as I publish them!

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

Don't worry: You can unsubscribe at any time. Powered by ConvertKit

ABOUT NEAL

Neal Schaffer is a leader in helping educate executives and professionals on social media as well as in implementing successful social media strategies for businesses. CEO of the social media agency PDCA Social, social media educator at Rutgers University and the Irish Management Institute, social media keynote speaker who has spoken at hundreds of events on four continents, and author of three social media books, Neal is a true innovator and influencer in the growing world of social media for business.

SEARCH THIS SITE

CATEGORIES

  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • YouTube
  • RSS
  • Email

Footer

Neal Schaffer

About Neal Schaffer
Influencer Marketing Services
Social Media Speaker
Social Media Consulting
Social Media Books
Neal's Social Media Blog Posts
Neal's Social Media Podcast
Social Media Center of Excellence
Hire Neal
Write for This Blog

Popular Blog Categories

Instagram Marketing
Twitter Marketing
LinkedIn
Facebook Marketing
Content Marketing
Social Media Tools
Influencer Marketing
YouTube & Video Marketing
WeChat and China Social Media
Social Media for Nonprofits
Social Media Strategy

Free Ebooks

Maximizing LinkedIn for Business
How AI is Revolutionizing Influencer Marketing
How to Build an Employee Advocacy Program
Focused Social Selling
The Social Media Tools for Business Buyer's Guide

More Social Media Resources

Recommended Social Media Books
Recommended Social Media Apps & Tools
Recommended Social Media Conferences
Recommended WordPress Plugins

Search This Site

Follow Me

Follows
  • Twitter
    222k Followers
  • LinkedIn
    40.8k Followers
  • Pinterest
    29.8k Followers
  • Instagram
    16.3k Followers
  • Facebook
    10.7k Followers
  • YouTube
    244 Followers

© 2008–2019 Windmills Marketing · Privacy Policy · Terms & Conditions · Contact

https://nealschaffer.com/author/nealschaffer/