State Farm “Cars 2” Tour Highlights Firm’s Own Brand of Special Agent

When you think of all the products that can benefit from a promotional tie-in with Disney-Pixar’s upcoming “Cars 2”—from Kellogg’s cereals and Rayovac batteries to Kimberly-Clark Pull Ups and Johnson & Johnson Band-Aids—insurance may not make your mental list. But State Farm hopes to change that, with a “Cars 2” online sweepstakes and a themed live tour timed both for the theatrical release this month and for the DVD/ Blu-Ray release in the fall.

State Farm’s “Cars 2: Agents on a Mission” tour is currently making 25 stops in large metro markets around the country, offering life-size versions of some of the car stars as well as interactive games and other activities.

What makes the movie an organic fit for State Farm is its appeal to young families, said Todd Fischer, manager of national sponsorships for the company. “Young families with households are the sweet spot for Disney with this movie,” he says. “In our world, they have a high propensity to have needs for insurance and financial services products, which is the core of our business.”

State Farm partnered with Disney on the launch of the first “Cars” movie back in 2006, and that decision informed this promotion too. “There are very few things that are aimed at the core of what we do from a passion point, and we found the first film had such a direct connection to our business that State Farm had a very natural and organic place in the world of ‘Cars’,” Fischer said.

The fact that the sequel involves characters from the original movie performing spy missions around the world makes for a lot of talk about “agents” in the mission—a natural parlay for promoting State Farm’s roster of local insurance agents nationwide. Those agents will be giving away special agent/ID decoder cards and other “Cars 2” premiums at their offices, as a way to extend the tie-in to regions not scheduled to receive a visit from the tour.

The tour itself involves a 50 x 50 footprint installed in parking lots at high-traffic venues such as malls, theaters and baseball parks, with life-size replicas of the movie’s lead car characters Speed McQueen and Tow Mater and a new character, superspy Finn McMissile.

There was a conscious effort to expand the appeal of this “Cars 2” tour into more interactive whole-family fun, Fischer said. Some locations will also let kids take “agent training” by running an obstacle course and participating in other on-site games. They will also have a chance to interact with the Disney Web site for “Cars 2”, where they can use the agent ID cards to create their own spy name and unlock access to special content.

As part of the tie-in promotion, State Farm is also running an “Agents on a Mission” instant win online game offering prizes ranging from movie DVDs to night vision goggles, walkie-talkies and a sweepstakes for a Cadillac SRX, set to close on July 17. Players as young as 6 can enter the “Agents on a Mission” game at the Disney Web site once they have activated their Agent ID card by registering on Disney.com. Parents will be notified by email of entry by kids younger than 13 and asked to give their consent.

Online players can earn additional daily entries into the sweepstakes by performing such weekly “missions” as downloading “Cars 2” wallpaper or logging in to the site via mobile phone using their special agent name.

A link on the Disney Pixar site also leads parents to the State Farm site, where they can input their access code to collect the family photos taken by State Farm ambassadors at the live events.

State Farm is currently making the “Cars 2” tie-in explicit with a national animated TV commercial that equips the characters of the movie with a State Farm pit crew. The spot, created by DDB-Chicago, has received about 30,000 YouTube views to date.

“The ‘Agents on a Mission’ promotion is a great way to bring our 18,000 North American agents to the fore in a fun way,” says Fischer. “Our agents are at the core of everything we’ve done for the last 80-plus years, and they are special agents that do amazing things for customers on a daily basis.”

One of those things could be bringing special showings of “Cars 2” to neighborhood theaters. Fischer says some agents in regions not served by the tour have opted to rent out whole theaters for special screenings of the movie in the first week after its theatrical release on June 24.