Millennials and Gen Z are faced with constant information overload. Thousands of messages from dozens of digital channels, constantly swirling to vie for just a few seconds of precious attention.
This fact left State Farm® with a related challenge: how to break through that constant noise to get younger generations to think about … insurance?
It’s not the most exciting topic. Even State Farm gets that. But to maintain its status as the nation’s top insurance company, State Farm needed to crack the code to engage with millennials and Gen Z. The answer turned out to be what State Farm has always done: be there, like a good neighbor. They just needed to engage in a different neighborhood community and with some different neighbors.
In 2022, State Farm® launched Gamerhood — the brand’s proprietary gaming tournament featuring prominent influencers — and it quickly became a mainstay in the gaming community. So much so that competitors took notice with several quickly attempting a move into the gaming neighborhood through their own forays. By 2024, State Farm needed to change the game once again to be top of mind for this audience.
Gamerhood: Neo City took the concept to new heights. This five-episode, all-things-gaming series was part reality show, part live gaming tournament that met gaming fans where they are online: Twitch and YouTube TV.
State Farm selected a diverse group of 12 of Twitch’s and YouTube’s most-followed gamers, influencers and content creators (188M collective reach) to leverage the authentic connections and communities they had already fostered to attract gaming audiences. This star-studded talent included gamers like Nick Eh 30 (25M followers), content creators like Ludwig (2022 Content Creator of the Year) and celebrities like multi-time Grammy award winner T-Pain – all competing in five custom game modes designed in partnership with Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular platforms overall and with consumers aged 18-24, who comprise 62.7% of its 60M daily active users.
State Farm then set out to create a never-before-seen playground for these influencers. They built the largest-ever physical gaming environment — a 75,000-square-foot futuristic, utopian neighborhood called “Neo City,” featuring team gaming pods, a vault, an interactive plaza and an arena for physical games that brought the spirit of video games into real life.
Players faced off in a unique format that featured three teams of three players competing in the physical and digital gaming tournament that included elements of a reality TV show. The dynamics between teams and players drove an intensity throughout the series as relationships were forged and rivalries affected gameplay strategy.
Teams competed for the Key to Neo City, which would earn a $100,000 donation to their chosen nonprofit. And to extend the positive impact, runners-up received $10,000 for their causes. State Farm engaged numerous organizations that the audiences care about with teams representing Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD), the American Red Cross and Junior Achievement.
State Farm also created a Jake’s Jingle Quest game, allowing thousands of gamers to compete at home for weekly and season-ending prizes as they watched the livestream. That way, no player was left out in the mission.
State Farm Gamerhood: Neo City results blew past expectations:
And oh, by the way, all of this happened while Gen Z and millennials were Learning. About. Insurance. Gamerhood: Neo City posted record-setting results; but more importantly, it authentically engaged millennial and Gen Z consumers to drive future brand demand for years to come.
