SafeAuto hits PR jackpot with jingle contest

What seems like a pretty simple request, asking musicians to record themselves performing an original jingle, has turned into a PR coup for car insurance company SafeAuto.

“The exciting aspect of this is that it’s combining traditional broadcast, online, and every avenue of marketing into one big campaign,” says Jason Parks, emerging media and video specialist for the company.

In its fifth year of inviting anyone with music in their heart to participate, SafeAuto’s contest has generated hundreds of thousands of votes and more than 200 video entries. It’s netted the company tons of attention on local newscasts, social media sites, and, perhaps most important, search engines.

Local beginnings to national spotlight

“It started out almost local here in Columbus and Ohio,” Parks says of the contest’s first year.

In the years that followed, Parks would travel to more and more cities in SafeAuto’s sales area to audition musicians. Some entries are videos that SafeAuto creates at those auditions; others are user submissions.

“We make sure that we travel to different cities in our footprint to make sure we have a certain number of videos,” he says.