As the largest property and casualty insurer in the United States, part of the State Farm mission is to help people manage the risks of everyday life, recover from the unexpected, and realize their dreams.

On top of the pandemic, the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was predicted to be especially volatile. With this in mind, State Farm leveraged IBM Watson Advertising Conversations (“Conversations”) to reach and engage consumers with personalized tips to help them stay safe and prepared throughout the year.

In late January 2020, just weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic set in, State Farm brought back its iconic tagline, “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.®“ Little did they know how important that phrase would be in the turbulent year to come.

To reach and engage consumers in 1:1, real time dialogue, State Farm leveraged Conversations, an industry-first AI-powered conversational marketing solution that uses natural language processing plus extensive training on the State Farm body of knowledge to enable personalized conversations with consumers around safety and preparedness.

State Farm ran their first Conversations campaign on The Weather Channel digital properties in 2018 to provide storm preparation recommendations to people in the path of the storm, to meet them where they are, with value. With the success of their previous campaigns, State Farm returned for additional Conversations campaigns, leveraging their previous insights to more effectively reach and engage consumers during the 2020 season.

IBM Watson Advertising Conversations is an industry-first interactive advertising solution that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver hyper-personalization at scale along with actionable insights for the advertiser. Since its 2016 launch, Conversations has been leveraged across industries including automotive, retail, healthcare, CPG, and entertainment.

User sessions with Conversations, on average, exceed Google Rich Media interaction time spent benchmarks by more than 2x, helping brands develop deeper, more meaningful relationships with consumers. The more consumers interact with Conversations, the more insights a brand can discover and apply to their future marketing and business strategies.

With the weather becoming increasingly volatile and people paying more attention to the weather than ever before, State Farm ran their Conversations campaign in a contextually relevant environment on The Weather Channel app and weather.com, delivering personalized safety tips and recommendations to consumers to help them prepare and stay safe in the face of severe weather.

IBM Watson was trained on the State Farm corpus of information, including their website, FAQs, and marketing materials. Then, custom banner creatives and a conversation experience were developed.

Using natural language processing, Watson engaged users via input fields and chat buttons on the front screen of the ad and within the conversation experience, delivering personalized responses.

Once a user engaged with the ad, a dialogue box encouraged self-exploration of safety-related content to help consumers plan for the season ahead or in the face of inclement weather. With easy quick pick topic buttons, users could expand the chat experience or enter in a free-form question. Conversations allowed users to easily find safety preparedness advice to protect themselves and their property.

The experience included dynamic banners, high-impact takeovers, and integrated home screen experiences. In addition, weather targeting was applied to reach consumers most likely to be experiencing seasonal firsts or inclement weather.

With Conversations, State Farm increased awareness and consideration and saw meaningful time spent with consumers, including:

5.4% lift in brand preference among those exposed to the campaign*

13% lift in unaided brand awareness after seeing severe weather creative*

4.5% lift in brand perception of “provides coverage which will protect me”*

1 min 15 sec average time spent, +389% vs. Google Rich Media benchmark**

Conversations also acts as a mini focus group, providing real-time audience and customer insights. For example, State Farm learned that consumers were most interested in severe storm safety information in the summer, and home and automobile safety information in the winter.

*Source: 2020 Dynata Brand Lift Insights study of State Farm IBM Watson Advertising Conversations campaign

**Google Rich Media time spent benchmark is 19.27 seconds