Christophe Langlois
Social media insurance. Would You be Kind Enough to Help Flo, the Progressive Insurance Girl and Queen of Social Media in Insurance?
First of all, how much do you know about Flo, “the Progressive girl”? Let’s say Flo is to Progressive Insurance what Aleksandr Orlov is to Comparethemarket.com. You know the infamous meerkat, right? 😉
I got to know Flo last year when I started tracking Progressive’s social media initiatives as part of my Visible Banking Social Media Watch Series (Twitter,Facebook, Blogs, YouTube).
In a nutshell, Flo has been is a fictional cashier on TV commercials for Progressive Insurance since 2008. In just a couple of years, she achieved TV ad icon status and became a popular topic of discussion on social media conversations.
She has a dedicated wikipedia page and a 450,000 member strong page on facebook (created and maintained by fans), 50 times more thanProgressive’s own page.
Progressive & Social Media
Progressive is one of the leading car & motorcycle insurance providers in the US. They even provide Segway insurance! Interested? 😉
Let me say that Progressive is doing a good job leveraging social media. Please find below some of their initiatives:
* Blogs: they have been blogging on their understanding insurance blogsince October 2007.
* Facebook: they have one main page, Progressive Insurance with almost 9,000 fans (#8 out of the 31 insurance pages I am tracking in my Facebook Watch), and an application Progressive Pets with over 20,000 photos and 1,600+ monthly users (#2 out of the 20 applications I am tracking).
* Twitter: they have two main twitter accounts, Progressive with close to 4,000 followers (+40% in Q1 2010), #5 most followed account out of the 150 insurance accounts I am tracking on my Twitter Watch, andAsk_Progressive dedicated to customer support. They also haveprogloyalty and progautoxp.
* YouTube: they launched their channel back in March 2006. In the last three years, they uploaded 67 videos, and their most popular video has been viewed over 82,000 times.
Help Flo, Progressive’s latest video contest
My Take
* Clear call to action: driving traffic to two main social media assets
* They fully leveraged those contacts with email capture
* They rebranded their twitter page to promote their HelpFlo initiative
* They created a YouTube playlist with 10 videos dedicated to Help Flo
* REWARD: it is fun and you can be on TV. It reminds me a bit the Wells Fargo CenterStage video contest where the winner got the chance to appear on a TV commercial broadcasted during the superbowl in 2008.
* Video capture: they organized three events in three cities to record videos:NYC, Miami, LA (# videos: 2,580)
