State Farm has the tremendous potential to own what it means to be a good neighbor, not only through their products and services, but also by inspiring other good neighbors to join them in strengthening local neighborhoods. State Farm’s mission is to help people “manage the risks of everyday life, recover from the unexpected, and realize their dreams.” The brand promise, "Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is there" embodies the service and care they place on the communities that we all live, work and support. As America’s largest local brand with 19,000 agents, 58,000 employees, and a presence in nearly every neighborhood across the country, it’s in their DNA to contribute to over 7,000 local non-profits each year.
In 2022, as part of the State Farm 100 Year Celebration, State Farm expanded the actions they take in celebration of their renewed commitment to community betterment. Returning in 2022 for its 11th year, State Farm's Neighborhood Assist program awarded $25,000 grants to 100 local nonprofit organizations. The Neighborhood Assist program is a key opportunity to demonstrate what being a “Good Neighbor” truly means to State Farm.
In 2022, State Farm’s goal was bigger than just giving money back to local communities. Through impactful promotion and communications throughout the program, State Farm strived to inspire local organizations to participate and encourage participation in voting for the winning organizations. Finally, State Farm celebrated the winning organizations through a paid media campaign highlighting the impact these grants would make on local communities.
To celebrate State Farm’s 100th anniversary, the State Farm Neighborhood Assist program committed to going even bigger by awarding 100 winning nonprofit organizations $25,000 grants, totaling 2.5 million dollars in grants. Promoting this program throughout the entire 8 months was a key opportunity for State Farm to demonstrate what being a “Good Neighbor” truly means and that they are a leader in giving back to communities.
We brought the 2022 program to life through focusing our efforts on five key phases, beginning with submissions opening, through the voting period and closing the 8 month program out by celebrating the 100 winning organizations through a paid social media campaign.
In order to begin building awareness ahead of open submissions, we began promoting the program through email and organic social educating organizations on how to submit and encouraging new organizations to participate. Once submissions opened, we hit our maximum of 4,000 submissions in less than one hour, nearly matching the time it took in 2021 when our maximum submissions were half as many at 2,000 total. The total time it took for us to reach our maximum 4,000 submissions proved the excitement and awareness of this program had grown significantly this year.
Once we narrowed the 4,000 submissions down to 200 finalists, we shifted to building a seamless and informational user web experience while also promoting the finalists and upcoming voting period.
In order to promote and amplify the voting period, we focused our communications on email reminders, SMS text and organic social including a strategic partnership with social media influencer Will Taylor. This focus allowed us to double the total impressions and reach new audiences. During the one week voting period, we received 2.2 million total votes and social media conversations garnered 98.8% positive sentiment around the program.
When it came to announcing the 100 winners in Neighborhood Assist’s biggest year yet, we didn’t want to just give out more grants, but also make a bigger deal about our winners. To celebrate the winning organizations individually, we granted them title of Most Valuable Neighbor and developed a surprise prize box to commemorate their achievements and the good their grant will do.
Finally, we brought awareness to the impact of this program by dedicating a paid social media campaign to highlight the larger scope of the 2022 program and celebrate our winners by displaying the breadth of the work they’re doing in their neighborhoods. To capture our video content, we selected three winning causes to visit and speak with first-hand about the work they do in their neighborhoods. This allowed us to develop a long-form video capturing the breadth of these three causes and the impact their grant will have on their individual communities, as well as social media cutdowns that ran across social platforms in a paid campaign that aggregated over 75 million impressions.
For this eight-month program, true success is seen through the direct community impact from the $2.5 million put into 100 different organizations. Without the ability to qualitatively track and measure these impacts, we focused our success on garnering interest for organizations to enter the program, excitement for voting participation and highlighting winning organizations through a successful paid media campaign.
Success in garnering interest in this program specifically from local organizations was proven through the 52 minutes it took for us to reach the maximum submissions of 4,000 organizations. In 2021 it took 44 minutes to reach the maximum submissions, which was half as many at 2,000 total organizations.
Success in building excitement for voting participation can be seen through the total number of votes, 2.2 million, in tandem with overall organic social impressions and brand sentiment. Our organic social resulted in 86,000 total impressions which led to a 98.8% positive brand sentiment in social listening.
Finally, we found success in our paid media campaign which featured custom content highlighting three different winning organizations and what the grant means to them. Our goal was to use a paid media campaign to amplify the work of winning organizations and succeeded with over 75 million total paid impressions in non-skippable media placements.
