The State Farm Gamerhood Challenge

About Project

A top U.S. insurance provider, State Farm (SF) wanted to create a groundbreaking activation in the gaming space to connect in a unique, innovative, and original way with Millennials (26-41) and members of Generation Z between 18-25 to generate interest from this target audience.
The challenge was developing a campaign that would resonate with and educate this fickle target market about insurance in a fun way they would embrace and find entertaining.
While many brands focus on Esports, which has $1.38 billion in annual revenue, State Farm strategically targeted the all-encompassing $208 billion casual gaming market to create a first-ever all-things-gaming competition. State Farm made the strategic and bold decision to create its first proprietary gaming tournament so the company could control the narrative and develop the sole message for this audience, free from the noise and clutter of other brands and their logos. After significant research and planning, State Farm developed a five-episode activation series that was a combination of reality show meets live gaming tournament in a State Farm Universe on the largest set ever constructed for a gaming event. The tournament would celebrate and bring to life all elements of gaming — featuring trivia, online, yard and mobile games.
In a groundbreaking, first-of-its-kind 'all things gaming' series, State Farm (SF) created the renowned five-episode event called The State Farm Gamerhood Challenge.
Living in the Gamerhood were a strategically selected group of popular, diverse players and hosts — professional gamers, influencers, and content creators — whose massive followings combined to have a collective reach of 61+ million.
Within this specially designed State Farm universe, SF built a 50,000-square-foot utopia-like gaming neighborhood of eight homes in a cul-de-sac that became the focus of streaming, online, mobile and yard games. This “Gamerhood” was the largest-ever physical build for a gaming environment.
Showcasing a 1990’s sitcom vibe, complete with its own jingle, the Gamerhood Challenge featured three gaming segments in every episode — trivia (with audience participation), popular video/mobile games, and traditional yard games.
The winner of each episode took on SF’s famous character — Jake from State Farm — in 1-on-1 yard games that included basketball, cornhole, street hockey, Giant Jenga, and Connect Four.
To creatively connect the audience with their overarching insurance narrative, SF constructed remote-controlled, custom-built machinery to schedule programmable, ‘insurable mishaps’ that triggered bursting pipes caused by a burst water main, blown-out windows from a tornado, a heatwave that caused an avalanche of exploding popcorn, a snowstorm that penetrated the homes and UFOs crashing into the Gamerhood! Gamers played through these hysterical mishaps, leading to incredible viewer engagement.
Tapping into SF’s Good Neighbor theme, in what became a signature element of every episode, Jake presented the opening round trivia winner with a State Farm Special Delivery package — a helpful gift for the next insurable mishap.
To further promote audience engagement and allow viewers to play along at home, SF developed TWO groundbreaking Twitch extensions — synced real-time across multiple channels. Viewers played for prizes in trivia competitions and Draw That Thing — a Pictionary-like game. The Ultimate Gamerhood Champion was awarded the Gamerhood trophy — a gigantic key to the Gamerhood. The winner also had the honor of presenting Children’s Miracle Network with a $100,000 check in their name. With every episode streamed simultaneously on 10 Twitch channels (State Farm’s, players, hosts) and Rooster Teeth’s subscriber site, the Gamerhood celebrated spectacular viewership numbers. State Farm also generated massive Gamerhood interest by having players reach their audiences through social channels and YouTube videos-on-demand (VOD). Using creative storylines and behind-the-scenes footage, players shared VOD clips that nearly doubled total viewership!
Despite it being the first event of this type, State Farm set massive measurable goals:
• 3.5 million Twitch/Rooster Teeth site views
• 61+ million episode reach
• 168,000+ ACV
• 3.4 million YouTube VOD views
• 51+ million VOD reach
• 100% increase of State Farm Twitch channel followers
• 750 million brand impressions
• 57+ million social media reach
The State Farm Gamerhood Challenge far exceeded SF’s expectations and generated 1+ Billion impressions!
Measurable results:
• Twitch channel followers: +340% — 100% goal — +240%
• 61,477,000 episode reach — 41+ million (M) goal — +49%
• 5M Twitch/Rooster Teeth site views — 3.5M goal — +43%
• 178,000+ ACV (Average Concurrent Viewers) (35,675/episode) — +20%
• 64M VOD reach — 51M+ goal — +25%
• 4.2M VOD clips viewed — 3.4M goal — +24%
• 122M+ social reach — 57M+ goal — +114%
Additional results:
• 57M+ PR impressions
• 100% positive sentiment
By every metric, the revolutionary Gamerhood Challenge was overwhelmingly successful. It resoundingly delivered on the company’s goal of appealing to younger audiences and generating future demand.