THE GENERAL
The General Brand Refresh
Embracing evolution while honoring history and heritage.
Revitalizing an iconic brand.
Whenever you mention The General, responses range from impromptu singing of the jingle to exclaiming, "The little guy with the mustache!" or asking questions about Shaq. Over 20 years of consistent TV ad creative and media spending built the brand outsized awareness, but the conversation often went downhill from there. During interviews, our target audience described The General as cut-rate insurance of suspect quality for bad drivers with poor credit who don’t pay their bills on time. What a mouthful! We had accidentally become infamous instead of famous through our own messaging!
The task was clear: we needed to disrupt perceptions of the brand as "low-quality insurance that’s not for me" to earn broader brand consideration.
Unearthing our true position.
The General needed a new message, a new way to connect with our audience, a new position. We set out to find the intersection between what our customers need most and what the brand already does best. After poring over our customer research and conducting executive stakeholder interviews, we discovered that breaks are the connection point. Our customers are keenly aware that "life happens"—it's why they buy insurance in the first place. Unexpected bills or a flat tire on the way to work and it's suddenly impossible to make ends meet. In those stressful moments, a little break on your insurance goes a long way.
Since marketing is the art of blending creativity and science, we validated our new position and reasons to believe through multiple methods, including surveys, interviews, and a conjoint analysis. We had indeed found a strong position with a meaningful point of difference to rally around!
Brand heritage is sacred. Small changes, big impact.
With all the baggage from our past advertising, it was time to give our strongest brand assets a strategic 21st-century kick.
The General character is, hands down, our strongest visual asset (one of the strongest brand characters across all categories in the Ipsos database, actually!). While highly recognizable, in his current form, he wasn’t being fully utilized. Beyond his graphics feeling stuck in the ’90s, we had to completely rebuild him using a modern animation tool to scale up his presence in our ads. From sketching all the way through to the final 3D-textured model, the team was careful to only give him "a shave and a haircut," ensuring his essence and likability were retained.
The General logo is another highly ranked brand asset that needed to be transformed to meet evolving print and digital usage requirements. The in-house team modernized the look and corrected typographical issues while staying true to the original design. At about 90% of the way, we partnered with Jessica Hische, a lettering artist and expert typographer, to provide the final polish and finesse to each letter, ensuring this new logo would stand the test of time.
Bringing it all together for the campaign.
The customer problem: No one wants to sit with The General at lunch—not the character; people think he's pretty cool. The problem is the overall brand reputation—cheap and cheesy, which doesn’t align with how our target customers want to be perceived. They would be happy to switch to a dependable insurance company that understands their unique needs and gives them a break, but they’re still not willing to be seen with The General yet.
The brief: We must enhance our audience's understanding and awareness of ‘Break’ in culturally relevant ways to break through and punch above our weight.
Break campaign idea: The break you need, no matter who you are. We put all types of every-day folks and even celebrities in situations where they just need a break and The General is there to deliver. In total, we made over 100+ unique pieces of content across TVC, digital video, display, and social media, each catered to the best practices of the platform.
Roll the commercials!