Gen Z is too big to ignore. They are the largest generation at 86M. And while most of them aren’t even of legal driving age yet (current age range 8-23 years old), in 5 years they will be a substantial percentage of Progressive’s business.

Gen Z sort of knows who we are but our competitors (GEICO, State Farm and Allstate) have a leg up there.

Our goal was to position Progressive for future success with Gen Z.

A fully digital-content only campaign made for the Gen Z audience - Driver’s Ed with Ed Helms is a unique take on stuffy, boring driver’s ed everyone knows but doesn’t love. It uses music to educate young drivers on insurance in a way they won’t tune out.

As always, we had to think audience first. What does this generation care about? Security & stability matter to this audience. Protection matters. Feeling safe and secure transcends generations. It was our “how” that needed to change to meet their needs.

When tasked with targeting one of the largest generations, we knew we had to meet Gen Z where they engage and become engrossed in fresh content daily — online. And while they can quote The Office in their sleep, car insurance typically isn’t the next TikTok video they are watching. Thus, the partnership with Helms to write funny songs about the otherwise mundane, dull insurance facts they need to know, was born.

The Drivers Ed campaign aimed to increase awareness and consideration for Progressive amongst Gen Z. Why? Because it’s never too early to plant the [brand] seed! With the overarching goal of increasing the likelihood of future quoting with Progressive, we leveraged entertaining and educational content across platforms, informed by Gen Z media insights. Across channels, the campaign response was positive, and results were strong; it was successful in achieving lift across two primary KPIs: brand Consideration and Ad Recall. Compared to industry norms, Driver’s Ed outperformed in each of these measured metrics. The highest lift over benchmarks was achieved in Consideration on YouTube (+217%), followed by lifts in Ad Recall for Facebook / Instagram (+5.4%), Snapchat (+5%) and TikTok (+5.95). And since this campaign is all driving future quotes with future drivers…we’ll have to get back to you once those business results are in.