How Jenna Lebel made Liberty Mutual competitive with heavy-hitter insurers

Jenna Lebel calls herself a creative problem solver, deploying skills she honed through a career that includes stints at social media agency Likeable and the 2008 Olympics. For the past five years, she has worked as chief marketing officer at Liberty Mutual Insurance, which she joined in 2013. That lengthy tenure has allowed her to try her hand at every position in marketing at the Boston-based insurer. See all of Ad Age’s 40 Under 40 honorees here “Insurance is such a challenging category because you don’t have a tangible product,” Lebel said, noting that it’s one of the few things consumers pay for but hope never to use. Lebel, 39, helped to make Liberty Mutual competitive with larger insurance brands by creating the spokesduo LiMu Emu and Doug early in her tenure as CMO. “In a cluttered, highly competitive category, developing these branded spokescharacters and having them go head to head with heavy hitters, the evolution of that has been fun to watch,” she said. “We will continue to find ways to insert them into pop culture and make them more relevant.” @libertymutual It’s called fashion. #FitCheck ♬ original sound - Liberty Mutual Lebel has also expanded Liberty Mutual’s internal agency, Copper Giants, which now contracts with external companies such as Harpoon Brewery and Rocky Pond for creative services. Copper Giants handles the bulk, or 80%, of Liberty Mutual’s creative marketing needs in a model other brands have been looking to replicate as in-housing becomes more prevalent. Liberty Mutual also works with the creative agency Bandits & Friends. “This ability to have [Copper Giants] flex and work on other stuff, it keeps their creative minds fresh, develops their own talent and retains strong performing talent,” she said. If you could have dinner with one person, alive or dead, who would it be and why? Greta Gerwig—if I wasn’t a marketer, I think I would’ve been a director. What I appreciate about Greta is she always brings a different perspective to storytelling and filmmaking. Her films are authentic, spirited, emotionally charged and always interesting. She’s had a lot of success in a historically male-dominated profession not only because she’s wildly talented but also by working hard and being creative. What are the top two social media sites you use on a regular basis? Marketing is all about storytelling, so for me personally, I gravitate toward Instagram and LinkedIn. Instagram is all about visual storytelling in my personal life and LinkedIn is for sharing my professional, company and team stories. What’s currently on your bedside reading list? “Grit” by Angela Duckworth. The main message is you can get good at things by applying yourself and being persistent. Building capabilities is more important than what’s innate. Success isn’t determined just by what you’re born good at. Not everything in every job comes intuitively to everyone; it’s about being able to power through and persist. What was the last show you binge-watched? I recently re-watched “Veep.” Julia Louis-Dreyfus is brilliant and the show is hilarious. It’s a prescient, masterful comedy that has really held up over time. At what age do you hope to retire? Honestly, I don’t ever see myself retiring. Both of my parents are still working and have always demonstrated the importance of personal development and having a sense of purpose. I see my life more in chapters and I think I’ll just be finding different ways to be creative, learn and contribute in each chapter. See all of Ad Age’s 40 Under 40 honorees here

How Jenna Lebel made Liberty Mutual competitive with heavy-hitter insurers

Featured Stories