In January 2018, NJM took its first step outside New Jersey, expanding personal-lines coverage into Pennsylvania. To do it, NJM put together an ad campaign that looked like every other insurance company’s: billboards on Routes 95 and 76, TV spots during the Olympics and prime-time sports, radio ads on WIP and KYW, print buys in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
It was thorough. It covered every channel available. And it said nothing about NJM that a viewer would remember the next day.
Three years later, NJM and its longtime agency partner Brownstein tried something different. In April 2021, the two scrapped the conventional playbook for a tagline that mocked it outright: “No Jingles or Mascots, Just Great Insurance.”
The campaign leaned on NJM’s J.D. Power claims-satisfaction recognition as the insurer pushed further into Mid-Atlantic and Midwest markets, betting that a jab at the category’s own clichés would cut through where a standard media buy hadn’t.
It was campy. It was silly. It was goofy.
And it was memorable.
The ‘No Jingles and Mascots’ theme has evolved into ‘Insuranoia,’ but the recognition continues. In fact, NJM CEO Carol Voorhees says it’s almost always the first thing people mention when they learn where she works.
That matters.
“The realities are, Geico and Progressive have 98% awareness in all across the nation,” she said. “So, we’re in the market with the big boys, so it’s been fun to play in that space and to have some success.”
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The key to advertising is not only connecting — but resonating.
Voorhees feels the Insuranoia campaign, wacky ads built on the premise that insurance is complicated — and that NJM’s dedicated reps are the antidote to that anxiety – does just that.
“The more broad marketing is very personalized focused,” she said. “We started with no jingles or mascots, which I thought was really creative to get that NJM rebrand, and now we’ve stepped into Insuranoia.”
Reaching your intended audience obviously is key, too.
The personal-lines messaging is the version most New Jerseyans see on television, running heavily and consistently. Commercial-lines advertising, by contrast, is more targeted and less visible to the general public, aimed instead at business owners weighing coverage options.
“Those commercials go more specific to business, the business community, so they’re not as quite as widespread seen,” Voorhees said. “But they’re out there because we do want to make sure that we’re building our brand awareness on the commercial line side as well.”
Brand awareness matters more in some markets than others. In New Jersey, where NJM has operated for 113 years, the commercials reinforce a name most residents already know.
In markets NJM has recently entered, such as Ohio, where NJM is competing against those national players with far larger marketing budgets, the calculation is different — and the gap in scale is exactly what the “no jingles or mascots” positioning was built to offset.
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That ad campaign from 2018? It’s so 2018.
They are built around a simple slogan: ‘This isn’t just insurance. It’s NJM.’
One features a car on a country road with a sun rising the background: ‘It’s the thrill of a whirring engine. It’s blur of the trees on your favorite detour. This isn’t just a car. It’s your car.’
It’s dullsville, if we’re being honest.
And nothing like the ads NJM has been producing since the No Jingles or Mascots campaign started.
Voorhees said she hears confirmation when she’s out and about. And she hears it in the company’s West Trenton headquarters.
“Everybody loves them,” she said.
