Allstate Case Study
Case study · Financial services

Premium creator content for a brand – and an audience – that demands it.

Allstate, a Fortune 100 company and one of the country’s largest advertisers, hired Sundae to drive awareness for its motorcycle insurance product among new riders. We made cinematic, culture-native creator work that ran alongside the rest of Allstate’s marketing and earned its place there. The Meta Brand Lift Study confirmed what we already knew: audiences remembered.

Client
Allstate (former client)
Category
Financial services / insurance
Engagement
Creator campaign · premium creative production · paid social amplification
Year
2019 campaign · Meta Brand Lift Study, 2019
Markets
US
Product
Motorcycle insurance
Channels
Paid social (Meta) via allowlisting
The challenge

A Fortune 100 advertiser. A specific audience. One of the best briefs in creator marketing.

Allstate is a Fortune 100 company and one of the country’s largest advertisers — a brand that has shaped American financial services for decades and whose creative is scrutinized by senior stakeholders, governed by compliance, and judged against the best broadcast work in the category. The brief for this campaign was specific: build awareness for Allstate’s motorcycle insurance product among new riders, using creator content that could meet the standard of every other piece of marketing Allstate puts in market.

That made this less a creator campaign and more a creative-execution problem. The work had to feel native to motorcycle culture and credible to riders, while holding up to the review process, brand standards, and visibility that come with one of the most-watched advertisers in the country.

Most creator programs aren’t built for that. This one had to be.

The strategic read

How we read the brief.

Three convictions shaped the work.

Cast from inside the culture.

New riders trust other riders. We built the program around a creator pod: premium content creators recruited from inside the riding community, who carried the brand because they were already part of the world it was speaking to.

Direct it like a brand film, not a content drop.

Creator work given the production craft of broadcast: scene quality, sound, pacing, brand integration, editorial vision. Allstate hired us for creator content; we made content that could sit on a reel.

Build paid into the production plan from day one.

Format variants, rights, and allowlisting were designed before cameras rolled, so the strongest stories moved straight into paid social without losing fidelity. Performance never became a reason to compromise the craft.

The approach

What the program actually did.

01

A premium creator pod recruited from inside the riding community

A tight group of premium motorcycle content creators, chosen for storytelling craft, production capability, and standing inside the riding world, brought further riders and authentic talent into the campaign. The cast read as a community on screen because it was one off screen.

02

A social content platform built around the first ride

The creative was built around an emotional truth: the first time on a motorcycle. The platform gave creators a shared narrative frame: first rides, first routes, first moments, connecting Allstate to the aspirations of new riders without leaning on insurance language.

03

Cinematic content directed like a brand film

Production directed for a polished, broadcast-quality finish: scene composition, sound, pacing, and brand integration. Made to sit alongside Allstate’s best creative — not in a separate column for “social content.”

04

Paid social built into the creative, not bolted onto it

The strongest content moved into Meta paid social through allowlisting — running ads from the creators’ own channels so the work kept its native voice in feed. Format variants and rights structures were planned in production.

05

Enterprise operations, run with creative on top

Brief structure, creator vetting, review cadence, and rights documentation designed to make this kind of work possible inside a Fortune 100 brand: fast enough for the production schedule, rigorous enough for the brand standard.

The work

What we made.

Sundae ran the program end-to-end: creator strategy, casting inside the riding community, creative direction, premium content production, rights and licensing, allowlisting, and paid social amplification. What came out of it: a premium creator pod, cast from inside the riding world, cinematic long-form video built around the first-ride creative platform, and a native paid social presence running through the creators’ own channels.

Allstate Moto creator content
Allstate Moto creator content
Allstate Moto creator content
Why it worked

Why the work is worth talking about.

The cast was the difference.

Recruiting from inside the riding community meant the content carried the texture of a culture rather than the polish of a brand pretending to belong to one. Real riders. Real first rides. Real road.

The first-ride platform gave the campaign a soul.

A clear creative idea meant every piece of content added up to the same brand truth — emotional, specific, and easy to remember. Rare in financial services, rarer in paid social.

Production craft is what made it cinematic.

Composition, sound, pacing, and editorial vision directed to broadcast quality. Creator work that can hold its own next to a network spot.

The operations made the creative possible.

A Fortune 100 brand’s approval, compliance, and rights process is real, and this program moved through it without slowing the work down or cutting corners on brand standards.

Audiences remembered.

The 5.6% brand recall lift in a Meta Brand Lift Study is independent confirmation: the work didn’t just look great. It worked.

Results

Audiences remembered.

5.6%

Brand Recall Lift
(Meta Brand Lift Study, 2019)

91M

Impressions

10.8M

Video views, with 50% of viewers watching at least half the content

More work