As an official partner of Team USA for the 2014 Winter Olympics, Liberty Mutual had a big opportunity and an even bigger challenge: though the brand had category exclusivity during the Games, it would now be competing for consumers’ attention within a compressed period of time among a crowded field of iconic brands, whose core product offerings were inherently more interesting and splashier than insurance.
Our strategy for achieving this was to reposition the brand in a way that tapped into the equity and emotion of the Olympic Games. Liberty would no longer be in the business of insurance—it would be in the business of comebacks, much like Olympic athletes themselves. From this idea, the broader RISE campaign took shape, and we identified 10 legacy athletes and Olympic hopefuls, each of whom had a unique, emotionally resonant personal or professional comeback story and who had the potential to RISE to greatness at the Games themselves. We then created a series of short, docu-style films that told their stories, distributing them through social and paid efforts in the months leading up to (and during) the Games.