It isn’t cheap to get the word out about a brand and the coverage it offers.
Auto insurer, Geico Corp., which is well recognized for its insurance marketing on television, online, and on billboards, has announced that it spent nearly a billion dollars ($993.8 million) on its advertising campaigns last year.
This is the most spent by any single vehicle insurer in the United States.
It is also a great deal more than the company, itself, had spent, having increased by a full 10 percent from the 902.7 million that it had spent the year before. One of the main drivers of the spending was the ever building competition among insurers that has been going on over several years, as they strive to become the most common among the household names.
Some of the primary competition for Geico in this battle includes State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., which is already the largest among the American home and auto insurers (when measured by premiums). That said, it holds second place in its spending after having boosted its insurance marketing budget by 29 percent to reach $813.5 million. These figures were confirmed by State Farm, which is recognized for its “Like a good neighbor State Farm is there” jingle.
This increase pushed State Farm above Allstate Corp in terms of advertising expenditures.
Equally, it appears as though there is no sign of slowing at any point in the near future. Each of these insurers continues to boost their budgets, hoping to keep its position among the highest.
Earlier this year, the top insurance marketing spenders were tallied within several reports. This data was gleaned from the tallies made by insurers of the expenditures that they make for television, billboard, and newspaper advertising, in addition to the price they pay for their public relations firms, plaques and medals for their agents, their mailing lists, and an assortment of other costs.
Among all of the property and casualty coverage lines, auto is the largest, making up a third of all of the written premiums. Also, according to the Insurance Information Institute trade group’s president, Robert Hartwig, it is responsible for a much larger number of advertising dollars spent. In fact, Hartwig estimated that among all of the insurance marketing spending made within property and casualty, over half of it is connected with vehicle coverage.
