There’s some strange goings-on in the car insurance advertising world right now, and that’s saying something, since the whole genre of car insurance is a deeply strange thing. I’ll talk more about this in a moment, but the specific strange thing that is happening at the moment is that there are protests – with signs and shouting and people and everything – against a hairy yellow sphere with too many teeth that shills insurance.
The sphere is named Liberty Biberty, and it is a mascot for Liberty Mutual’s car insurance business. This mascot seems to have annoyed enough people that a group of angry protesters were marching in front of Liberty Mutual’s headquarters in Boston. I mean, it is pretty annoying, sure, but a protest? There’s two most likely reasons for why it’s happening at all: one, tongues are firmly in the cheeks of otherwise bored people, or the company itself is doing this all as some manner of callow publicity stunt.
Boston-area media have been covering the pretty unserious-seeming protests, so the world can see what’s happening. Maybe they were jealous of Paris getting all the protest-related attention:
So, there’s, what, maybe 30 people or so there? That’s actually a pretty good turnout. It seems that all of this backlash started from a 19-year-old YouTuber who has a channel that often discusses advertising and mascots, and about three weeks ago, he published a video lambasting Liberty Mutual’s weird little saffron-colored wad:
…that video was followed up with a call to action, the aforementioned protest, which happened this past weekend:
If you’d like some context so you can decide if this level of vitriol is warranted, here’s one of the ads in question featuring the yellow furball:
It’s the teeth, I think, that make it feel so wrong. The name derives from what I personally feel is an even more half-assed 2019 ad campaign, which featured a spokesperson flubbing the pronunciation of “Liberty Mutual”:
These ads were, I thought, fairly unremarkable and uninteresting. They felt forced and contrived, but they must have had some sort of success for the company and their ad agency, Bandits & Friends, because they took the flubbed line concept and developed it into whatever the hell this is.
The creative director of Bandits & Friends, Nicholas Bauman, seems especially delusional:
“Liberty Biberty was already hugely culturally relevant, and we saw this untapped potential as an opportunity for the brand to capitalize on. So, we turned a flubbed line into an entity in and of itself, while tying it back to Liberty Mutual. And a fuzzy, yellow manifestation of the feeling of great insurance made perfect sense to us.”
“Hugely culturally relevant?” The hell are you talking about, Nick? I don’t think any part of America was gripped with Liberty Biberty mania, ever. At all.
Liberty Mutual’s previous ad campaign featured a yellow 1972 Plymouth Duster, a dude named Doug, and an emu doing what I think is some sort of ’70s buddy cop movie type of schtick:
At least those had a fun car in them.
The existence of the fuzzy yellow toothed orb may seem a peculiar choice, but in the context of car insurance marketing, it’s really just standard operating procedure.
Car insurance may be one of the most heavily advertised products or services that has ads that say, essentially, nothing. In some ways, they’re the purest form of advertising there is: unburdened by the details of the product they’re selling, a product that doesn’t even have a physical manifestation and is hard to differentiate from its competitors other than by price, but even then the complexity of car insurance options make direct comparisons difficult.
Plus, it’s legally required for people to have car insurance, so there’s absolutely a huge market for the product, which means it’s worth putting money into advertising. The result of all of these factors is that companies will make car insurance commercials that say almost nothing about car insurance itself, and instead will attempt to just capture attention and memory with distinctive mascots or characters or entertainement.
That’s why one of the most enduring car insurance ad campaigns features a woman who sells insurance that has been transformed into a physical object sold in stores, packaged in boxes, and also somehow merits the use of an apron when being handled:
That’s the first Progressive insurance commercial that features Flo, and there’s a whole strange white-void insurance store there, complete with insurance that’s bought in physical boxes ready to be, I guess, brought home, opened, and dumped over your car?
This ad campaign is shockingly still going and well-received, for reasons I can’t fully fathom.
Other companies like Geico have mascots like that little gecko, who has a Cockney accent for reasons that are, again, incomprehensible.
I bring these other mascots up just to drive home that car insurance advertising is, charitably, ridiculous. Almost no useful information is given in any of the ads, save for vague claims of money saved and concepts about “bundling,” whatever the hell that actually means, and what is actually being advertised is really just a name and any positive associations the given brand can implant in your mind.
So, with all this in mind, it’s maybe not so strange that a fuzzy yellow puppet that looks like pom-pom granted life by a Temu wizard and wearing a Statue of Liberty headpiece should be a viable car insurance company advertising mascot.
Is it actually more annoying than the lizard or the Progressive lady or the guy they told to mispronounce words in unlikely ways? Maybe? Maybe not? Was this “protest” a PR stunt by the company to drum up interest and articles just like this one so people would be talking about Liberty Mutual car insurance? Maybe?
It could also be some YouTuber doing something to get attention, which, again, mission accomplished.
I think it’s worth talking about at all mostly because of a reminder of how stupidly or maybe wonderfully unserious the world of car insurance advertising is. I don’t think the medium has been explored as effectively as it could be though; what if actually compelling or funny or interesting content could be funded and produced and put out into the world under the guise of car insurance ads? I mean, if they’re going to make fuzzy blobs that piss people off, anything is possible, right?
Right?
Top graphic image: screen grab, Liberty Mutual
First he has to sell off his extra eyes, then he has to resort to shitty ads. Lo Pan’s guardian sure fell on some hard times since his master was killed by Jack Burton.
Won’t take money from Polymarket, will take money from Liberty Mutual /s…. I think
I make a point not to purchase any products from companies that subject me to stupid ads. Insurance, gutter guards, auto insurance, extended warranty companies, windshield replacement, logo printing companies……I think advertising has saved me a great deal on money.
Right? I get my insurance from NJM. No Jingles or Mascots.
In all seriousness, I do. They’ve been the cheapest option for me for a long time.
Did no one learn anything when, after the first season, they ripped out all of Barney the Purple Dinosaur’s teeth and replaced them with non-anxiety-inducing plain white denture strips?
I mean they’re all varying degrees of annoying but imo the Liberty Mutual ones are both not that funny and above average levels of grating, especially the liberty biberty schtick. The buddy cop ones were sorta funny the 1st time or two, but after they seemingly plastered the uh digital airwaves they quickly got old and the later ones make me feel dumber every time I sit through one. That being said I can’t imagine wasting some of my precious life protesting them.
Flo from Progressive has been a thing since 2008??? I simply don’t get it..
The real question is how much of my premium is used for this shit?
Half of your premium goes to advertising and football games, the other half goes to the shareholders so they can buy more property in Monaco
Sorry, that’s
– 45% advertising
– 45% shareholders
– 2% stadium naming rights
– 2% administrative overhead
– 2% fighting claims
– 2% paying claims
– 2% CEO’s pocket
State Farm and Chaos for the win. The others can live, NJM can go pound sound. Can’t stand them.
Whatever ad agency decided to boost that video is giving Liberty good value for money, dang. I hadn’t known about this, or thought about Liberty Mutual Auto Insurance, until seeing it here.
Advertising insurance products is hard. How do you visualize insurance? The closest thing is to advertise peace of mind. That’s where the Jake from State Farm ads come in, along with the “Chaos like me” ads.
But that’s been done to death, so what else do you do? At some point they resort to “building brand equity” by doing absurd things or creating mascots that hopefully become mnemonics for the brand.
Visualize insurance by the “scare them and then save them” technique. I didn’t think I needed insurance, but then some freak *name your disaster here* came through and destroyed everything; I was going to live in my Astro van, but then *name your insurance company here* showed up and replaced everything. I think Allstate used to run ads like this.
Somewhere I read that the more ads you see by an insurance company, the less you should trust them with your property. I’ve lived by that rule-of-thumb ever since I had to start buying insurance.
At least for us here, I recall at one point the Geico gecko drove what appeared to be a small Austin-Healey.
This is true. It wasn’t actually a Bugeye, but it was definitely inspired by it.
So they made something so annoying dumb people reward them with free PR. Sounds like a false flag. Probably their pr department. Should have had a bunch of Chinese sweatshop key rings of the bibery made to throw at people.
Companies need some kind of social credit score. You do good by people it goes up. You act like a clown it goes down. I’m very sick of flo and whatever progressive is doing. I got sick of liberty and the emu. GEICO should stick to lizards and cavemen. That cave man tv show was done so wrong. But more importantly why are insurance and drug companies advertising. Why are banks advertising. If you need anything from them you aren’t going to go I saw a commercial. I would rather see ads for weird Chinese devices I didn’t know I needed.
Liberty Mutual lost me when one of the commercials had a woman talk about researching “torque ratios” when buying a car.
Also, I think the caveman ads were pretty good. When they made a sitcom with that same theme, it was over. Now, unfrozen caveman lawyer, I’d watch the heck out of that show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AzAFqrxfeY
I remember the cavemen but I can’t remember which company put out those ads.
GEICO had the cavemen, stick with the lizard
“Why does Geico have three different spokespeople? They have the cavemen, the lizard, and then the stack of money with the eyeballs!”
“And the fake Rod Serling guy!”
—30 Rock, 2010
Remember when they tried to make the cavemen into a TV series? No? Lucky you. I wish I couldn’t.
You hit a spot for me.
The Liberty ads over the biberty thing was really annoying. Then a Tribble-tm became the joke? agh.
The line with Doug and Limu is that they are “customizing insurance”.
I actually have them for insurance, but wow, what a campaign or three.
The Geico lizard, ugh, such a bad accent. So many ads cause the Head of the Charles and they are a sponsor.
Maybe would have been better with Flo walking in Boston post card scenario.
BTW: That is NOT a cockney accent. It has too much public school style.
The only insurance mascot I ever liked was the Aflac Duck.
Finally adding Ben Affleck to Aflac has been a long time coming…
Bring back the LiMu Emu!
Liberty has won.
And Autopian helped.
It’s like the Elon effect.
Also John Oliver (Last week tonight) urged his followers to post memes about Liberty
I read about the protests this morning, but I honestly thought they were satire. Funny satire even. Then I saw this article and thought “did Jason get fooled by the Onion?” But wth, it’s a real story? That’s all I came to say.