Our friend Scott Noble directed a pretty amazing video for Liberty Mutual.  It’s called “Trunk” and you can see it here. The ad has been nominated as a “top spot of the year” on Shootonline.  If you like “Trunk”, you can vote for it here.

As I thought about all the cool aspects of the ad, which is technically and visually stunning, a bunch of thoughts came in my head.  The main one was that car insurance is a product with a number of really challenging value propositions to get across.  But over time, we’ve come to understand a number of complicated concepts, mainly due to repitition of a number of high quality ads.

There is so much money to be made in auto insurance and the competition is so fierce, the awareness advertising efforts by these marketers just keeps getting better and better.  Being part of a hot market can really make you raise your game.

The second thought I had was that I am really inclined to like Liberty Mutual ads.  Not to take anything away from Scott’s great work, but I am a Liberty Mutual customer, and a very happy one at that.  Part of me just happens to smile on the inside when I see an ad by Liberty Mutual.  I also smile when I see Nissan Altima ads, or hear our new favorite bands Santogold or Phoenix as backing music for a million commercials.

It turns out that we as humans really like having our choices reinforced.   This concept is spelled out in great detail in Daniel Gilbert’s great book “Stumbling on Happiness” .  According to Gilbert (warning: massive dumbing down follows),  our brains are wired to fill in information all the time.  And reinforcement on choices we’ve already made is one of those classic areas where our subconscious is in the drivers seat.

But like I said, this ad is still great.