Farmers Insurance’s New CEO Says It’s Making Some Noise on the Branding Front

For years, Farmers Insurance has taken somewhat of a back seat when it came to branding and marketing itself. But now the Los Angeles-based carrier is making some noise, said the company's new president and chief executive officer, Jeff Dailey.

"Even though we were a large organization that's been around for a long time, we were not particularly well known. We were more of a quiet giant when it came to marketing ourselves," added Dailey, who assumed his new role on Jan. 1 after F. Robert Woudstra retired at the end of 2011.

Now, the company is heavily building out its brands and broadening its distribution, including a plan to expand what has traditionally been a "west of the Mississippi company" to the East Coast.

"We're trying to establish the benefits of why someone would want to be associated with Farmers, and things like our catastrophe buses are good examples of that," he said. Farmers currently has several mobile claims center buses and a fleet of 39 customer care vehicles with Internet service, claims handling and satellite TV that travel to U.S. cities hit by catastrophes.

Its latest advertising campaign centers on the University of Farmers and the in-depth training agents and employees receive at the actual 120,000 square-foot agent, claims, leadership and management training facility in Agoura Hills, Calif. "This was a three-phase campaign approach, the first focusing on reintroducing Farmers to the public," said Dailey, a Detroit native and the former personal lines president of Farmers.

Dailey is only the 12th president in the company's 83-year-old history. The former CEO of Bristol West Holdings, which was acquired by Farmers in 2007, began his career in the industry in 1980 as a multiline insurance adjuster with Mutual Service Insurance. He worked at Progressive Insurance Co. for 15 years, and went on to form the nonstandard auto insurance start-up Reliant Insurance Co., which was owned by Reliance Group Holdings.

Part of Dailey's plan focuses on building its multiple brands, including the independent agent brand Foremost Insurance Group and its online and direct response marketing brand 21st Century Insurance, which Farmers acquired from AIG in 2009. "We continue to build out those brands, improve our customer experience and make products more sophisticated. The end result of all of those efforts is profitable growth," he said.

One of the biggest challenges carriers now face, one which Dailey said the industry brought on itself, "is the vast amount of advertising over the past five to 10 years that has told people how to shop. The world has really changed rather dramatically from an insurance-buying perspective, and we are now trying to align our brands up with the new shopping behavior in the U.S."

Personal lines carriers like Farmers also are trying to battle what Dailey calls "horrific weather conditions" over the past few years. In 2011, Farmers suffered one of its largest catastrophe-related claims payout years in history, he said. "But we're working hard to help in those situations, ensuring building codes are improved and helping people pick up the pieces and get their lives back together through our various cat response activities."

Farmers is also making itself known to a new generation of insurance shoppers. "We're at the forefront of social media and have more than 2 million likes on Facebook, are active on Twitter and continue to find ways to connect our agents with customers and prospects through social networks," said Dailey.

Farmers Insurance Group of Cos. is the third-largest insurer of personal lines passenger auto and homeowners insurance in the United States.

Farmers Insurance Group has a current Best's Financial Strength Rating of A (Excellent).

(By Lori Chordas, senior associate editor, Best's Review: Lori.Chordas@ambest.com)