Liberty Mutual insurance has a new spokesperson: It’s this fuzzy polyp with teeth:
That’s Liberty Bibberty, and you’ve probably encountered…they/them?…if you’ve recently watched football, reality TV, or basically anything broadcast in English. Probably more people know Liberty Bibberty than their member of Congress, and I have no doubt that googling “Libberty Bibberty erotica” would teleport me directly into the heart of darkness.
Liberty Bibberty comes from a riff from a different Liberty Mutual ad — the one with the actor who keeps flubbing his lines. So: Liberty Bibberty is Frasier to that ad’s Cheers. And if you’re thinking “Isn’t Liberty Mutual also the Limu Emu and Doug?” — yes, that is also them. There is basically now a Liberty Mutual Cinematic Universe, with new characters being added all the time.
And it’s not just Liberty Mutual: Geico has the Gecko, an endless parade of recurring characters, and a podcast where you can get to know the Gecko better (seriously). Flo From Progressive is perhaps the most fully-realized fictional character since Anna Karenina — we’ve met her family and friends, we know her hopes and dreams. Jake from State Farm has more interactions with American cultural figures than Forrest Gump. The name of the game in most advertising is “cute mascot + sticky catch phrase”, but the name of the game in insurance advertising seems to be “a fully imagined universe of characters whose depth rivals anything imagined by Tolkien or George Lucas.”
Why is that? And where is this headed? Will we eventually have meticulously-crafted insurance character environments complete with histories and cultural divides, like Narnia or Westereos? Will they speak a bespoke language, like Dothraki or Klingon? Will online fandoms tear themselves apart debating whether it’s time for a female Jake from State Farm? I don’t understand the logic that brought us this far, so I don’t know if there are limits — I can’t rule out the possibility of an arc where the Lime Emu and Doug break up and get other partners, or a Roots-esqu saga in which we follow Flo From Progressive’s family through the generations.
I think we may be witnessing the fruits of an ad executive grudge match. If there’s one thing I learned from Mad Men — other than that one way to deal with alcoholism is to just power through — it’s that advertising people are hyper-competitive. Perhaps Geico’s ad agency dominated the Clio Awards in the 2010s, and their competitors sore vengeance. That would explain the arms race, and it would also explain why the ads are episodic and self-referential — a common move when clout-chasing is to get artsy. There might be ad people out there saying “The Geico caveman ads were cute, but the Farmer’s Insurance Guy is modeled on Plato's Phaedrus, who exemplifies the dual nature of man. Which is why we got Golden Globe winner JK Simmons to play him.”
This trend in advertising makes me respect The General. You probably know The General, the cut-rate insurance company that features super-low-budget ads that use the computer graphics from Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing video. The fact that The General has not only resisted the spokesperson inflation trend, but has not followed any trends regarding flashy or even competent advertising — and yet are still a company — makes me think that their product must be great. It’s sort of Big Dick Energy for insurance — not trying at all makes me wonder what’s under the hood.
I fear this age of self-spawning insurance mascots. If one Liberty Mutual ad can generate another, but the original still exists, then there is a real danger of these ads spiraling out of control. What happens when insurance mascots outnumber humans, which is projected to happen in 2028? Drastic measures may be needed to rein this in. Because I’m not convinced that 30-second insurance ads need to represent the apex of human creativity.
The yellow puff ball made me sit and think too. My conclusion is that insurance might be a field where each company doesn't have much to differentiate itself from the others. Your experience of your insurance company should be hardly noticing them at all. Pricing is too customer-specific to advertise reliable and legible discounts. All they have is branding.
"Probably more people know Liberty Bibberty than their member of Congress"
I admit my long-term memory has been so corrupted by commercial jingles that I'm having a hard time remembering my Congressperson's name, but I think it might be Lauren-y Boebert-y? Something like that.