Insurance startup Lemonade poaches Casper’s chief marketing officer

As it builds out its internal creative agency, insurance startup Lemonade has named its first chief marketing officer. Jeff Brooks, who was most recently CMO at direct-to-consumer mattress brand Casper, will oversee all marketing at the four-year-old insurer, which is based in both Tel Aviv and New York. The move follows the formation of Lemonade’s internal agency in July. The company, which uses artificial intelligence as chatbots to engage with customers, tapped Nuno Ferreira, formerly a creative director at 72andSunny, as head of creative marketing. He will now report to Brooks. According to Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Shai Wininger, new work from the Lemonade Agency will get underway next year. “Next year, more focus will be put on building the Lemonade brand in other mediums,” he says, noting that Lemonade will continue to advertise on Facebook, YouTube and other digital channels. While all creative work to date has been done internally, Wininger says that as the company grows a more robust in-house agency is the “natural step forward.” By creating a collaborative atmosphere, the scrappy brand already has gained ground against larger, more-established competitors. Wininger says that one of the brand’s engineers already writes some entertaining copy for the brand in the App Store. “We identified her talent as a comedian and gave her permission,” he says. “This is something that could never have happened in an agency dynamic.” Similarly, the brand’s work on #FreeThePink, where it is disputing rights to the color pink with T-Mobile’s parent company, was the result of group Slack sessions among employees. Brooks had been in the CMO role at Casper since early 2018; prior to that, he worked on the agency side, most recently at Huge. A Casper spokeswoman did not return a request for comment about plans to replace him.

Insurance startup Lemonade poaches Casper’s chief marketing officer

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