The General’s decade-long TV campaign was noticed, but for the wrong reasons. The campy, low-fi ads reinforced concerns about the brand— that it is low-quality insurance and not “for me.”
So we launched a new campaign to change this perception based on our point of difference: With affordable rates and helpful services like the ability to pick payment due dates, The General gives drivers a break when they need it most.
In addition to our new approach to television, we needed to reach people where they were increasingly spending their time – in social media. TikTok is particularly important because not only does our audience spend an average of nearly an hour per day in-app, but it also heavily influences today’s culture. So how can The General engage its TikTok-obsessed audience to improve awareness and consideration?
Objectives:
1: Increase brand and advertising awareness.
2: Increase positive social sentiment on The General’s owned pages to 50%.
3: Increase intent to get price quotes.
The General’s target audience includes millennials who could use a break in life. For instance, they often-times have been treated poorly by insurance providers because they either have bad credit, no credit, and/or are late on paying bills.
At the same time, they’re spontaneous, adventure-seeking, music lovers who see their cars are an extension of who they are.
They’re also digitally-savvy cord-cutters who stream content primarily on their phones, play games, pass memes around, and spend a lot of time on social media. TikTok is their preferred platform. The average user 24-54 spends 56 minutes per day [Insider Intelligence].
Through social listening, it seemed every other video on TikTok was someone telling a story in their car, doing pranks in their car, or singing in their car. Filming TikToks in cars is not just a trend, it has become a platform behavior.
This led us to our key insight: A TikTokers car is so much more than a car, it’s their make-shift content studio.
With our insight, we could connect car insurance to our audience’s passion points: cars and music. Our audience goes to TikTok to discover new music, musicians create content on TikTok with the hopes of getting their big break, and The General is in the business of giving breaks.
So we created The General Sound Studio: The first mobile professional recording studio built to give TikTok artists their big break.
#TheGeneralSoundStudio is a custom SUV complete with professional equipment and a sound engineer inside. We collaborated with legendary label, Epic Records, and invited up-and-coming TikTok musicians to record their next single, filming the experience and using paid media to boost it on TikTok.
We featured nine, charismatic musicians/influencers of different music genres, from country to rap to alt R&B. We designed The General’s TikTok page to be a hub for the fresh music recorded inside The Sound Studio.
We defined three phases to our activation strategy:
Setting The Stage:
• This first phase of content aimed to generate awareness and interest in the program. We introduced The General Sound Studio and encouraged audiences to follow our up-and-coming musicians striving for their big break.
The Sessions:
• We featured the recording session with award-winning sound engineer Hilton Wright II in The General Sound Studio, including the final professionally recorded tracks. Additionally, each musician documented their Sound Studio experiences and posted to their own social channels.
Amped Up:
• The final phase recapped the program and highlighted the musicians’ big break experiences, including more streams, new fans, and one-on-one coaching sessions from Epic Records.
The General not only launched a TikTok content series, but we helped nine creative and talented musicians launch their careers.
1: We significantly increased the number of people who said they heard of The General.*
2. We increased positive social sentiment on The General’s owned pages by 32.5%.
3. We increased the number of people who said they would consider getting a quote with The General. *
Additionally:
• The General Sound Studio led to a more successful year than expected. As of September 30, 2023, our YTD Sales crushed our benchmark AND prior year sales.
• 192 million views on #TheGeneralSoundStudio hashtag on TikTok
• Over 585K Spotify streams the songs recorded in The General Sound Studio
• 2,000+ TikTok comments
*See confidential for full results.
