Citing L.A. Wildfires, State Farm Cancels Super Bowl Ad, Delays ‘Severance’ Tie-In Spots
Citing the L.A. wildfires, insurance provider State Farm has canceled plans to run an ad on next month’s Super Bowl and also delayed production of a tie-in campaign with Apple TV+ series Severance.
The Super Bowl ad was to have marked a return to the Big Game for the insurer, whose outing last year starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito ranked as one of the best-received spots during the telecast. It finished No. 1 on USA Today‘s AdMeter viewer survey.
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No details had yet been released for this year’s expected Super Bowl ad, but circumstances in Southern California have complicated the optics of a jokey 30 seconds of airtime costing several million dollars. For more than a week, State Farm has been grappling with the fast-evolving fire situation. The disaster has killed at least 25 people, destroyed 12,000 structures and forced tens of thousands of evacuations lingering into a second week.
State Farm is the largest insurer in California and will be a central player in an anticipated recovery effort that has not yet meaningfully begun. Insurance industry experts project insured losses to range between $15 billion to $40 billion, with economic losses anywhere from $150 billion to $275 billion.
“Our number one priority right now is the safety of our customers, agents and employees impacted by the fires and assisting our customers in the midst of this tragedy,” State Farm said in a statement.
Fox Sports declined to comment on the Super Bowl ad when contacted by Deadline. Fox sold out of inventory months ago, so it will find a surplus of willing buyers on a waiting list.
Reps for State Farm did not respond to requests for additional comment from Deadline.
Ad Age was the first to report on the Super Bowl ad cancellation. Ad Week also reported on the Super Bowl pullout and had the initial news that State Farm is pausing production of a series of co-branded spots tied into Season 2 of Severance. On-screen pitchman Jake from State Farm interacts with characters from the series and had been slated to appear at last week’s L.A. premiere for the new season, which was scrapped due to the fires.
While those co-marketing messages would likely have landed later in the new season’s run, as with the Super Bowl it is difficult to predict the societal and media environment that will exist in a few weeks’ time. Even though the episode didn’t do serious damage to State Farm, the NFL’s decision to move the L.A. Rams’ playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings from SoFi Stadium in L.A. to, yes, State Farm Stadium in Glendale, AZ, generated a notable amount of unfavorable social media chatter. Even prior to the fires, State Farm had attracted scrutiny for discontinuing coverage of 72,000 homes and apartments last summer, blaming the spiraling costs of covering fires and other disasters. Word also emerged several days ago that 1,600 policies in Pacific Palisades were dropped by the company in July and 2,000 more policies in two other L.A. ZIP codes.
While scripted drama is a world away from the Super Bowl, the affiliation with Severance also brings brand sensitivities, particularly for the legendarily meticulous vanguards at Apple. While Apple TV+ is an ad-free, subscription service, a number of advertisers had been attracted to the cachet of the critically acclaimed series despite its occasionally violent and explicit scenes. The promotional campaign for Season 2 is continuing to generate buzz. Marketers set up a bold stunt Tuesday in New York’s Grand Central Terminal, in which cast members Adam Scott, Britt Lower and Zach Cherry appeared as their characters in a pop-up glass cube.
One source familiar with Super Bowl buying and selling trends told Deadline that no other brands in the insurance category – a robust one for sports – appeared to be on the verge of following State Farm to the sidelines for the Fox broadcast.
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