NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. is starring in a new TV commercial for a Brea-based pet insurance company, compliments of the firm’s parent, Nationwide Insurance Co. in Columbus, Ohio.
Nationwide Pet, formerly known as Veterinary Pet Insurance, posted about $300 million in revenue last year, commanding about 40% of market share, according to the North American Pet Health Insurance Association in Raleigh, N.C. Its closest competitor, Seattle-based Trupanion, has 17% of the market.
“In our industry, we are the big dog, but even at our scale, we would never be able to independently afford the type of promotion that we can get as a part of the broader Nationwide family,” said President Scott Liles. “And that’s both having access to someone like Dale Jr., but also having the media spend and ability to develop such a professional spot.”
Mike Boyd, senior vice president of the enterprise brand at Nationwide, said the deal is “mutually beneficial” since “three out of four consumers think of us as an auto and home insurance company … It’s great to be able to tell stories with [themes] like pet insurance, because it really is a way to illustrate we cover and protect people across every area and every part of their lives.”
Dog Person
The 30-second “Animal Whisperer” ad, created by New York-based Ogilvy & Mather, shows the race car driver walking with his dogs, Gus and June Bug. The pets ignore his pleas to sit, but Earnhardt has better luck with his buffalos, Laverne and Vera—one of them grunts right after he asks her to speak.
The commercial is part of the “Many Sides of Dale” marketing campaign that also shows the son of the late Winston Cup winner Dale Earnhardt as the “boss man” at his JR Motorsports and soon-to-be husband of Amy Reimann.
“We are trying to shed some light that not only there is more to me than being a race car driver, but there is more to Nationwide than just car insurance,” Earnhardt said in a behind-the-scenes video, adding that he’s sponsored by Nationwide and has been its customer for more than 25 years.
The ads are airing on Fox Sports during NASCAR races and will continue throughout the racing season. Boyd declined to disclose the media budget for the campaign but said the “Animal Whisperer” ad is “in heavy rotation as part of other Dale Jr. commercials.”
The Brea unit also is benefiting from “Songs for All Your Sides” commercials featuring country music star Brad Paisley and singer-songwriter Rachel Platten, who put their own spin on the “Nationwide is on your side” jingle. The 30-second ads, also made by Ogilvy, are airing during the Rio Olympics on NBC.
The commercials have “the power of the narrative and music, a way to strike a chord with consumers and really talk about all parts of their lives, large and small,” Boyd said. “One of the visuals is of a little girl holding a cat up to her mother, and the father is standing behind her saying, ‘What do you want me to do, she wanted this kitten.’ [The ads are] getting just a tremendous reaction through social media.”
Print advertising is a small part of the campaign. Nationwide Pets runs ads throughout the year in People, Sports Illustrated, Men’s Health, Rolling Stone and veterinary industry trade publications.
The company was founded in Anaheim in 1982 by a group of about 750 veterinarians whose goal at the time was to combat “economic euthanasia,” according to Liles.
“Folks (were) choosing to put down their pets instead of having to pay for the necessary procedures to keep the pet alive,” he said. “And what these veterinarians saw was people were making a financial decision. They started to think of the way which could alleviate that financial burden when caring for your pet.”
With that, “Veterinary pet insurance was born.” The first policy in the U.S. covered the star of the TV show “Lassie,” according to the company.
Veterinary Pet began working with Nationwide “very, very early,” Liles said, since the founders “were great veterinarians, but they didn’t know a heck of a lot about running an insurance company, and they were looking for a partner to help them in that.”
The insurance giant, which reported $43 billion in sales last year, began acquiring shares of Veterinary Pet in 1997. In 2008 it bought the entire company, becoming the only major insurer to own a pet insurance firm—all other U.S. pet insurance providers are independent entities, often owned by a private-equity firm, he said.
Nationwide Pet employs 400 in Orange County and another 60 at an office in Denver. It has about 575,000 policy holders on its roster, up from about 500,000 last year.
“Pet insurance is one of the fastest growing personal lines of insurance in the country,” Liles said. “The market grew at about 17% last year, which is just outstanding for a voluntary personal line of insurance. That said, there is a very low penetration of pets—only 2% of pets are covered in the U.S., so it’s a rapidly growing market with a lot of headroom.”
