Progressive Insurance Gets Flo Going with Women Followers
Written by Alex Patriquin (contact - e-mail) -- July 23rd, 2009 |
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Last week, Compete launched Ad Impact, a new offering that measures the effectiveness of online advertising. We decided to take Ad Impact for a test drive and what better place to start than with an online ad for auto insurance.
You may recognize the character above from Progressive’s peppy TV commercials. The character’s name is Flo and it turns out she has something of a cult following.
Flo has her own unofficial fan site and Wikipedia entry. “The strange allure of the Progressive insurance girl”, as Austin360.com put it, even has Ad Age’s Bob Garfield saying she “is a weirdly sincere, post-modern Josephine the Plumber who just really wants to help.”
On June 15, Flo received premier placement on the MSN homepage, generating significant insurance shopper interest for Progressive.
Using Compete’s Ad Impact, we know that MSN homepage visitors who saw Flo’s banner ad were twice as likely to visit Progressive.com and 2.4X as likely to search using the term “Progressive” in the week after seeing her ad.
As one would expect, Ad Impact often shows lifts in viewthrough to the advertiser’s site and in brand searches from ad exposed individuals. But who are these individuals responding to Progressive Flo and what can we learn about advertising from them?
Ad Impact shows that females, ages 25 – 44 that earn $30– 60k were more likely than other demographic buckets to visit Progressive.com after seeing Flo’s ad.
A bit of internet sleuthing suggests that Flo herself fits this profile. Her MySpace page says she is 39 and I’d bet that blisteringly well-lit abstraction, the Progressive store, pays her a retail salary between $30 – 60k.
So while blogger Tim Nudd at AdFreak admits that “Dudes have a thing for Flo”, it’s really women that are demographically similar to Flo that respond to her ads, at least on MSN.
I’m not sure if Progressive was targeting women like Flo when their ad agency created her, but I’d suspect they are pleased with the results – a broadly appealing character that has won cult-like attention from men and women alike and a core constituency of women that identify with her persona.
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July 24th, 2009 at 9:24 am
I’d like to see her take on Erin Esurance in a cage match.
We all know who would win that ‘bake off’
July 24th, 2009 at 10:48 am
This is one of those ads where you don’t need numbers to tell you it’s good. But you do need the numbers to tell you how well and in which areas you’re doing well. Which confirms what I said on the other post about Al Ries.
July 25th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Where did you ever find a girl that fits the Commercial as good as she does ? She is a common as the day is long, very refreshing.
July 27th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
This is pretty cool. Can you do this type of analysis on ads that run in other areas off the homepage? I like to compare behaviorally targeted ad success vs. contextual to see which drove more actions.
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:59 am
I’m not sure if Progressive was targeting solarhotwatersystem.net women like Flo when their ad agency created her,
August 20th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
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happy every day!
August 21st, 2009 at 2:15 am
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October 14th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
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