Last year State Farm made it’s Super Bowl commercial break debut, sparing no expense on star power with appearances from Drake, Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers, and Paul Rudd. But this year State Farm is trying something very different. While other companies are still shelling out for Super Bowl spots and A-list talent to fill them, State Farm has decided to sit this game out and focus on social media.
On Saturday they kicked off their newest Tik Tok campaign, the #TeamStateFarm challenge, which invites people to send in an audition tape of sorts by posting a duet with Jake from State Farm. The top 3 posts will be pinned, then Jake from State Farm’s followers can vote on the best one and the winner will get to star in an upcoming State Farm commercial. Presumably they won’t get paid as much as Paul Rudd, but who knows.
This may seem like an odd choice, especially because State Farm’s VP Of Marketing, Alyson Griffin, said that last year’s Super Bowl commercial was a “huge success”. But this year they’ve decided to break from tradition in order to draw in a younger market. This seems to be working so far. State Farm’s Tik Tok account started last November and already has 222.6 thousand followers, double the number of followers they have on Twitter. And millennials are now outspending older generations on car insurance, so the pivot makes sense.
Launching a Tik Tok only campaign so close to the biggest ad spending day in the year is a pretty brave move. As news on who will be in the Super Bowl commercial lineup comes in, State Farm’s absence is a pointed example of social media’s growing power.
