The situation

Create a value-based relationship with State Farm's customers that stresses their position of thought leadership? Bring it!

State Farm Insurance is the leader in insurance for Americans today. However, this is not the perception due to disproportionate spending by Geico and E-surance, and consequently, State Farm was losing younger customers. We needed to have State Farm viewed as the thought leader and first resource for those going through main life changes. 

State Farm had a Learning Center that housed most of their guiding articles about how to purchase insurance and manage your insurance profile. It had become outdated and difficult to search due to lack of maintenance. 

We sought to change that.

The final Technology

State Farm had a great deal of research on their current and potential customers to give us demographic data to sort through. The UX and Creative teams used the data received as well as market benchmarks, best practices, and primary research to round out the data and come to four agreed upon brand personas. 

Once this had been determined and agreed upon, Analytics and Content teams received full inventory of all site content from the State Farm team to begin their content audit. Articles were reviewed by traffic, share rate, and alignment to brand personas to create 6 main content buckets and three main content types. We created a matrix with the UX team to identify what content types related to which personas and how to prioritize related content in the recommended carousel. 

At this time, the R&D team began constructing the custom built CMS. Once we were able to identify the content and media types, tagging needed, analytics reporting requirements, and any internal linking, the team made short work of creating a lightweight and user centric CMS that could run on the State Farm secure environment machines. Internal State Farm team members were used for product testing to ensure all needs were accounted for in the build.

Content teams worked closely with UX and Analytics to purge the content inventory in sections. In batches of 10-15 for 500 articles, the team updated and revised copy to reflect advancements and speak more directly to the appropriate persona. Articles were recommended to be promoted on social channels or cut based on performance. Content also worked with R&D to adapt certain media to perform better with updated delivery systems as applicable.

Creative and UX used the content inventory and personas to create a simplified navigation system that showcased the modernized version of the State Farm brand. Creative designed templates based on the content audit and informed UX of recommendations for creative specs for the UX team to include in their documentation.

Final documentation included a comprehensive 400+ page omnigraffle document that would serve as the permanent instructional document for the Learning Center build. State Farm team members were trained on the new CMS. Phased implementation is still underway, but viewable at the State Farm Learning Center Online.