In the past couple of years, auto insurance has sprung into a position as one of the noisiest advertising categories in the world. Whether it’s the Geico cavemen or All State State Farm at the MLB All-Star Game, there’s apparently a lot of money to be made by getting in front of our eyeballs to talk insurance rates. But an underdog success story is forming around Liberty Mutual, which has moved its marketing approach to meaning and is starting to reap some powerful returns.

Thanks to David Hessekiel at the Cause Marketing Forum, I found the video interview below with Liberty Mutual’s Senior VP of Communications, Steven Sullivan. Sullivan tells an impressive story of Liberty Mutual’s strategy for increasing its share of the profitable auto insurance market, from a position as a smaller player with smaller budget.

What I found most fascinating was that Liberty Mutual and its new advertising agency, Hill-Holliday, started to build its strategy by looking within. They gravitated to the company’s mission statement, which ended with the line: “helping people live safer, more secure lives.” They then interviewed employees to understand what they felt was special about Liberty Mutual. This research led to a strong overall belief that, “at the end of the day, we do the right thing.”

Liberty Mutual saw a connection between its employees and the customers it most coveted. The connection was a shared belief in the importance of personal responsibility. However, the team realized that just another 30-second ad would not be enough….

How do you really make something like that tangible? How do you connect with people in a way that’s not just another claim from a big insurance company that people are going to disbelieve?” (Steven Sullivan, Senior VP of Communications, Liberty Mutual)

The marketing team’s solution was to use television and print ads to build awareness of the importance of personal responsibility, and then drive them to engage and discuss the issues with others. The hub of this deeper engagement has been a website called The Responsibility Project, which includes video stories of personal choices around responsibility. And Liberty Mutual poses engaging debate questions on popular news sites - for example, asking if government should be responsible for regulating trans fats in restaurants.

While many brands claim that their consumers wish to engage in a dialogue, Sullivan has proof. Within months of its campaign launch, the company received more than 3,000 requests thanking them for promoting this message and asking for copies of the commercials that they could share in schools and churches. One man who doesn’t drive even sent in a $20 donation to the “cause.”

This Liberty Mutual campaign hits on what we label as “achievement” in the realm of meaningful marketing.  It is the highest form of meaning in that it has the potential to actually help people improve their lives, their family, and the world. The company is continuing its success and deepening its impact; for example, it has partnered with NBC to develop two made-for-TV movies that will promote the theme of personal responsibility.

And at the end of the day, this campaign seems to be a significant business builder. Liberty Mutual’s premium revenue in auto insurance is up 17.4% to $3.6 billion in the most recent six months, in part due to “strong customer retention and new business growth.” The added benefit is that by bonding with people who believe in personal responsibility, they are keeping and attracting the most profitable customers - the ones who take personal responsibility for not getting into auto accidents in the first place! Sure enough, the six-month numbers show that auto liability losses are down.

Our goal is to get people to say that Liberty Mutual shares my values and I’m going to get my insurance from them.” (Steven Sullivan, Senior VP of Communications, Liberty Mutual)

I also believe there is a strong long-term benefit to be seen in Marketing with Meaning and this specific  example. While Geico might be remembered fondly for years for its cute cavemen and gecko, Liberty Mutual has a chance of deeply linking in our minds as a company that stands for something uniquely important to our lives and society overall.

Seth Godin interrupted my weekend by forcing me to get an entry up about his brilliant lesson on sports marketing: Much of it is completely meaningless and unrelated to the brand, product, or service that sponsors it.

Godin specifically takes aim at State Farm and its sponsorship of Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby. He makes the brilliant point that you could swap State Farm with Allstate and see no difference. Well, Allstate at least sounds better with “All Star,” but neither likely have an impact on anything other than general brand awareness. In other words, State Farm is admitting that its insurance is the same as everyone else’s - so it’s best to just make people think of State Farm first.

On the other hand, look what Nationwide insurance is doing. It created a marketing campaign called “Have the Talk” in which the brand is encouraging families to have difficult discussions in life. Examples include tough talks with teens and speaking with older parents about their living situation. At havethetalk.com, visitors can get coaching on breaking the ice and tackling tough issues. The consumer benefit is not explicitly tied to insurance. But Nationwide knows that a business issue with insurance is that many people who really should think about insurance are not doing so. By starting these conversations, Nationwide is kick-starting discussions that might help drive category growth, and drive brand affinity for Nationwide (rather than just boosting general brand name awareness).

Seth goes on to take a shot at one of the oft-ignored but real reasons that we marketers embrace sports sponsorships: We marketers love to personally be a part of them. He proposes a pretty tough test:

Here’s my number one fiduciary rule for big brand marketers: The executives involved in approving a sports or entertainment promotion should not be permitted to attend the event.”

I think this might be a little extreme, but it is something marketers should willingly confront. I’ll admit to being attracted to NASCAR sponsorships as a Brand Manager at P&G, and I gravitated to racing when I had a chance to market Mr. Clean AutoDry Car Wash (for the record, it worked, and we won a race). I’ve seen fellow marketers and clients fall much further under the spell of sports events. I’d rather not give examples - to protect the guilty.

At the end of the day, sports sponsorships can come to life in a meaningful way. One current example is what Visa is doing to stoke the passion of the Olympics. The brand is also adding value to visitors with an ATM locater and a downloadable tip guide. Further, Visa connects its brand emotionally through its sponsorship of the Paralympics in addition to the main show.

So the moral of the story is to make sure that your sports sponsorships are as meaningful to your consumer as they are to you….

UPDATE: Brandweek recently interviewed several marketers with MLB All-Star sponsorships.  Mark Gibson, Assistant VP of Advertising at State Farm spoke a great deal about how sports sponsorships help his company “break through the in the most media-congested marketplace that there is.”  He later praised sports sponsorships “because it is Tivo-proof.”  Net, Gibson and Allstate continue to seek eyeballs rather than provide meaningful marketing for their customers.