Day 2 of SBJ’s Brand Innovation Summit opened in Chicago with a “CMO In The Spotlight” session with Kristyn Cook, State Farm’s executive vice president and chief agency, sales & marketing officer.
Cook, a 2025 SBJ Game Changer, pointed to the consistency that comes from the “iconic assets” that State Farm has -- the color red, the logo, the sonic, the slogan and Jake From State Farm -- with newcomer “Stan,” a talking basketball stanchion, making inroads as the company aims to “keep things modern and fresh,” she said.
“That’s where the pursuit of cultural relevancy lives,” Cook said. “And at the end of the day, we want to show up in the small moments and the big moments. And when you think of things like March Madness or the Super Bowl, in particular, we oftentimes want to connect with generational talent that may be of the moment and then storytelling that lives beyond the broadcast.”
But why sports? “There’s authenticity, there’s where fandom is, our audience-first strategy certainly,” she said. “And we have a formula relative to reach plus engagement equals attention. … Sports is a wonderful platform for us because it helps us engage with audiences that are deeply invested. They’re emotionally connected and it’s where oftentimes they experience things with family and friends and good neighbors.”
As for “Stan,” produced by agency Highdive with an AI-generated voice, he debuted this spring with State Farm athlete Caitlin Clark, and will be part of commercials through the remainder of the WNBA season. State Farm has been with the WNBA for 13 years.
“We wanted to bring him to life and we wanted to do in a way that only State Farm uniquely can,” Cook said. “And so we created a brand character that you’ll see more and more. ... It’s just a creative way for us to kind of lean in and say, ‘We’re a big supporter of this ecosystem’ … It just gives us license to do new and creative things as the sport continues to grow.”
Here more from Cook on other topics:
- On women’s sports: “It’s a growth strategy for us. It’s a driver of business outcome, but it also reflects the diversity of customers that we serve. And we’re very proud to be a longstanding supporter of women’s sports for over 20 years before it became hot and the momentum is there. And so we’re excited to see what’s happening.”
- On Jake from State Farm: “He’s become an iconic -- I don’t even want to call him a brand character, because he’s the quintessential good neighbor at the end of the day. He’s given us so much opportunity to show up in ways that are unexpected ... He is the same person on the screen that he is off. And so I think that’s why that is so successful for us.”
- On how her team develops KPIs to know if an activation is working: “I have an ongoing drumbeat, How do we know? How do we know? How do we know? And that’s really ingrained in our teams, in particular. ... Certainly, there’s the traditional things around brand linkage and memorability and business value. But for us, we are either generating future demand, creating current demand or cross-sell retention with regards to the state of our business in terms of driving business outcomes.”
- On the use of AI: “We’re probably in the same position as most everyone. I think we are leaning in relative to content, in particular, and have built our AI engine so that we can create much more scale in what we do as we’re serving up content in that personalized way. … We’re asking the question in terms of how can we be faster, smarter and drive more scale, but at the same time too, stay tried and true to what I think sports really gives you, which is experiences and how we can create emotional connections to different audiences through experiences.”
- On what the sports partnership model looks like for State Farm in three to five years: “Sports will be incredibly important and we’re hyper-paranoid about it because so much capital is flying in and there’s so much opportunity and media is fragmented and so we need to spend a lot of time thinking through what is next. ... We see more integration with brands and leagues and athletes and technology at the end of the day, and AI is just going to accelerate that. I think we’re building frameworks right now so that it helps us with decision making because for us it’s as much about what we don’t do and what we say no to because there’s so much out there.”
