Amica's CMO follows a key principle from Donald Miller's "Building a StoryBrand": the customer is always the hero. The brand's role is to act as the trusted guide, providing the tools and support the protagonist (the customer) needs to overcome their challenges and succeed. This keeps the focus on customer-centric storytelling.
To make its Boston Celtics partnership more meaningful, Amica collaborated with the team's foundation on a purpose-driven initiative. They jointly funded early childhood education centers, transforming the sponsorship from a simple brand placement into a front-page story about community commitment and shared values.
When Amica's partner Jayson Tatum got injured, they reframed the crisis as an opportunity. They created the "Back to Zero" campaign, aligning his comeback journey with their brand’s core mission of helping people recover from setbacks. This turned a potential disaster into an authentic, powerful story about resilience and support.
Amica's Boston Celtics sponsorship was restricted to a 150-mile radius. To overcome this, they signed a separate endorsement deal with star player Jayson Tatum. This strategic move allowed them to run national advertising campaigns, extending their brand reach far beyond the team's local market limitations.
In competitive categories like insurance, generic keyword costs are prohibitive. Amica's CMO explains that a key goal of brand advertising is to make consumers "mentally available" so they search for the brand name directly. This makes branded search their most efficient acquisition channel, drastically lowering customer acquisition costs.
A 120-year-old insurance company with 2% unaided awareness broke its reliance on direct mail by introducing 30 new media channels. This balanced approach between brand building and performance marketing dramatically increased their visibility and consideration in target markets, proving that heritage brands must evolve their channel mix.
Amica Insurance justifies its Boston Celtics sponsorship by moving beyond vanity metrics like impressions. They measure ROI by tracking lower-funnel activities like unique visitors to dedicated landing pages, policy conversions of season ticket holders, and regional market share growth, directly linking the high-cost partnership to tangible business value.