"We need
to align the entire company behind the most powerful brand asset we
have, which is 'Nationwide' and 'Nationwide is on Your Side,'"
Nationwide Chief Marketing Officer Matt Jauchius said, referring to
the iconic jingle.
The brand
is returning to its so-called "N and Eagle" logo, which first
appeared when the company previously known as Farm Bureau Mutual
was renamed Nationwide in 1955. The eagle was grounded
in 1998, when Nationwide went with a blue box logo that it called
the "Frame." The eagle came back gradually in recent years,
appearing briefly on a waving blue flag at the beginning of ads in
its ongoing "Join the Nation" campaign, which started in
2012.
Recent
research revealed that the eagle logo has 50% higher brand
awareness association with Nationwide than the frame logo, Mr.
Jauchius said. The eagle is "a unifying mark" for the new strategy,
"which is to unite the whole company behind one name, Nationwide,"
he said.
For the
new logo, the eagle got a facelift: It was redesigned to look more
like a real eagle, Mr. Jauchius said. The logo also uses a slightly
darker shade of blue. The marketer used Chermayeff & Geismar
& Haviv for the design.
The Peyton Manning ad is by Ogilvy & Mather, which recently returned
to the Nationwide roster after a long absence. McKinney remains the marketer's lead agency,
but Ogilvy was tapped to handle creative for a new, multi-year
marketing agreement with the Denver Broncos quarterback, which was
announced in May. The endorsement deal preceded Nationwide's
announcement last month that it had signed a three-year agreement
to become the official insurance sponsor of the National Football
League.
That
sponsorship allowed for Nationwide to use broader NFL imagery in
the Manning ad. For instance, the ad shows Mr. Manning and actors
playing his teammates in authentic Broncos helmets and practice
jerseys. "You can't show that without partnership with the NFL,"
Mr. Jauchius said. Still, much of the ad occurs off the field
because "people like to see their heroes away from the game," he
said.
In the spot, Mr. Manning hums and makes up his own
lyrics to the familiar Nationwide jingle while driving, watching TV
and making a sandwich.
Ogilvy
& Mather first won the Nationwide account in 1963, and soon
after created the insurer's iconic jingle. It lost the account in
1991.
Adam
Tucker, president of Ogilvy & Mather, New York, said the shop
dug into its archives as it created the new ad, viewing old footage
that included the jingle. "We all couldn't stop humming the track.
The line is so infectious and it sticks with you, and it's iconic,"
he said. "We wanted to do something with dramatizing the
line."
The shop
even met with Joel Raphaelson, a former Ogilvy employee who wrote
the song. He described that, at the time, research revealed that
there was an "unmet human need" in the category and "people wanted
insurance companies to be on their side," Mr. Tucker
recalled.
The following memo from 1964, which includes David
Ogilvy as a recipient, shows that the agency actually considered
several versions of the theme:
