Background
The MSW Creative GaugeTM AI service evaluates the sales potential of advertisements of different formats based on the content profile of the ad itself. Results are typically available within minutes, making this low-cost tool ideal for applications such as competitive testing, concept screening, early-stage evaluation and landscape analysis.
Automobile insurance is a fiercely competitive and heavily advertised category. The major auto insurance brands all increased advertising spend in 2024, including a 186.8% jump by Progressive, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. We decided to use Creative Gauge to evaluate recent ads for the seven largest brands in this highly competitive category. For each brand, we selected three recent video ads for evaluation by Creative Gauge AI.
Process
Once ads were selected, they were uploaded to the Creative Gauge dashboard and run past Meadow, the MSW AI assistant trained on years of MSW’s research into advertising content elements associated with sales effective ads. Utilizing MSW’s proprietary Creative Effectiveness Score (CES) model, Meadow provides an index summarizing overall ad strength (CES Index) as well as indices for four subcomponents:
- Brand Messaging
- Emotional Connection
- Brand Linkage
- Advertising Structure
Results
Overall, these recent auto insurance video ads tend to skew a little below average, with the majority of the ads being in the moderate range, but also with substantially more weak ads than strong ads:
Looking at the distribution of ads by the CES subcomponents, it is clear that ads in this category tend to struggle with brand messaging while excelling in terms of emotional connection and brand linkage.
Almost all the ads we reviewed scored weak in terms of brand messaging. And in fact, most of the ads have fairly generic messages that any of the brands could make. “Great price,” “bundle and save,” “customize and save,” “save hundres,” or just “save” are common claims that multiple brands are making. Even claims that perhaps only a particular brand is making, such as “we covered it,” “be protected from mayhem,” or “more than just saving,” tend to feel like something any of the other brands might say. In addition, many of the ads include extensive drama that appears to be, at best, tenuously related to the topic at hand, leaving little space for any actual messaging.
The ad with the strongest brand messaging score is the State Farm Batman vs Bateman spot which sets up State Farm as giving protection like Batman, versus other companies being more like Jason Bateman (depicted as an ineffective wannabe super hero). This provides an analogy that works to differentiate State Farm.
On the plus side, most of the major brands in this category use distinctive brand assets which tend to both bring instant recognition of the brand sponsoring the advertisement and foster a connection to the brand.
Auto insurance brands have some of the most recognizable brand assets in all of advertising. Continuing characters are used by most of the brands, including Mayhem, Limu and Doug, Jake from State Farm, Flo and her helpers, Professor Burke and of course the Geico gecko. These brands are also adept at using a consistent color palette, memorable slogans (e.g., “like a good neighbor,” “you’re in good hands”), catchy jingles, distinctive logos, consistent messaging and recognizable sound effects.
Most of the ads we reviewed use humor to engage and connect with viewers. This is also true of the two strongest ads we studied, one each for Progressive and Farmers. These two ads have similar CES profiles, with strong results for Emotional Connection, Brand Linkage and Advertising Structure overcoming relatively weak brand messaging.
The Progressive ad features Flo and her helpers quickly responding to an automobile accident and celebrating having arrived before Superman (a brief tie-in with the new movie is included). In addition to the brand’s typical humorous style and use of recognized characters, the ad features a demonstration of sorts which highlights an important service feature (response time) rather than dwelling on the typical bundle/saving messages common in the category. Progressive has used effective advertising along with category-leading ad spend to vault into second place in the category in terms of market share, gaining a full 3 share points between 2021 and 2024.
The Farmers ad features the familiar presence of Professor Burke observing a catastrophic, but humorous, accident, this time a giant gorilla advertising “smashing prices” falling to crush a brand new car as its new owner drives it off the lot. In a twist from Farmers typical “we covered it” message, Burke instead highlights a relatively new message in the category – Farmers’ new car replacement feature. Farmers has used such advertising to tread water in terms of market share (even moving from 7th to 6th place between 2021 and 2024) despite being vastly outspent by the category heavyweights.
