If you have a Facebook account, then odds are that you have had things posted on your page by your friends who want you to play one of the many games that exist in Facebook. Lots of those are made by a company named Zynga. Last year, Farmers Insurance made an appearance in Farmville. There are bigger plans for Farmers Insurance and Zynga this year.
Farmers Insurance is an actual, “real life”, insurance company. They sell auto insurance, homeowners insurance, life insurance, and insurance for businesses. This insurance company seems to think outside of the box when it comes to advertisements.
Recently, the insurance company ran an ad on television that tied into release of the latest movie in the X-men series, which is called “X-men: First Class”. In the ad, Beast is an exchange student who has transferred from the X-men school, to the “University of Farmers”. It appears that Beast has decided to become an insurance agent.
Last year, Farmers Insurance sponsored a football stadium in Los Angeles, California. The new stadium has been given the name “Farmers Field”. Naturally, this led to jokes about how odd it was to have something that sounds like a place to harvest crops located in the middle of LA.
In October of 2010, Farmers Insurance made an appearance in Farmville, one of the most popular games on Facebook. This was around the time when Zynga, the maker of the Farmville game, was incorporating advertising into Farmville, in ways that fit nicely into the game.
Farmers Insurance was represented by a Airship. Players who chose to place the Farmers Insurance Airship onto their farm enjoyed a form of virtual crop protection. Their crops would not wither while the Farmers Insurance ad campaign was active. This feature was an extremely handy one for a player to take advantage of, and millions of Farmers Airships were added to players Farmville farms.
This summer, there are plans for Farmers Insurance and Zynga to team up, once again. In addition to Farmville, Zynga makes Cityville, Cafe World, Mafia Wars, and Frontierville. The promotion is called “Win a Ride on the Farmers Airship”. To enter, you need to “like” the Farmers Insurance Facebook page, and then fill out a form. Winners will get to ride the real Farmers Airship.
There are plans for Farmers Insurance to re-appear in Farmville this summer, but details on that are not entirely known just yet. Farmers Insurance will also make a first time appearance into other Zynga games, (which the company has never done before).
Image by Mike Baird on Flickr