What is a yellow, fluffy name that will stick in your head? The insurance industry’s newest TV star.
Liberty Mutual has penetrated consumers’ brains over the past decade with a series of ads that feature an unforgettable slogan (simply repeating the company’s name a few times, like a song), along with bizarre characters including “Lim Emu” and a man named Doug. Starting this week, Liberty will add “Liberty Vivaty” to its doujinshi list. This character is an ambiguous anthropomorphic character intended to symbolize the emotions consumers feel when they obtain insurance at a fair price.
The characters may look strange, but the strategy behind them is anything but.
The expression “liberty liberty” has been featured in insurance company campaigns since 2019, when one of its ad characters known as “bad actors” uttered the phrase while trying to audition for the campaign. Jenna Revell, Liberty’s chief marketing officer for the U.S. retail market, said this is part of the intellectual property the company can wisely deploy.
“The phrase took on a life of its own. It caught on quickly. People kept repeating it. Sometimes people refer to our company as ‘Liberty Beverty,'” she says. “I think brands can spend years and millions of dollars building something like that, and we already have it. So instead of ignoring it, we leaned into it and that gave us an opportunity.”
The creatures join a growing number of characters appearing in commercials to help insurance companies differentiate themselves from one another. Over the decades, the average consumer has likely encountered Jake from State Farm. Progressive Flo and her colleagues Jamie and Mara, and of course Dr. Rick. Allstate mayhem. Geco’s Gecko. Professor Burke of Farmers Insurance. And of course, the famous Aflac duck.
Although Liberty’s ads seem to be everywhere, it’s not the industry’s biggest supporter of advertising. The company is spending significantly more than competitors such as State Farm, Geico, Allstate and Progressive, according to 2025 data from Dowling & Partners, a research firm focused on the insurance sector.
The key is finding the perfect fictional character to talk to about insurance. “Unfortunately, as an insurance company, we don’t have a tangible product, so I think this whole category relies on brand devices like brand cues and brand characters to really establish that connection,” Rubel says. “When consumers buy insurance, they only buy a few brands, and a few brands are always the first that come to mind. So, first-class awareness, unaided awareness, is very important in this category.”
The characters are quirky and become part of a larger story as viewers learn about them over the years. But even your favorite guests run the risk of becoming unwelcome at some point. This is why many insurance companies continue to add to their roster of oddballs. Many companies may also be concerned about the inevitable stage where consumers will begin to ignore advertising because they have seen the same ads or ads with the same theme over and over again. Since the advent of large-scale streaming services, this dynamic has played a huge role in marketers’ decision-making. Streaming services often show fewer commercials overall, but may send the same commercial to a particular subscriber multiple times during the viewing experience.
To stand out, Liberty Mutual hired Jim Henson Creature Shop and puppeteer Grant Baciocco to voice the new characters. “Dolls really bring a lot of joy and entertainment,” Revell says, adding that the Henson people are “experts in their field.” In the coming weeks, sports fans could see the new campaign integrated not only in commercials, but also on NBC’s “Sunday Night Baseball” and ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” Rubel said. “We are still exploring” additional partnerships, she added.
The yellow creature is just one of the concepts Liberty Mutual considered. Rubel said the company considered dozens of different concepts, including unicorns, aliens visiting Earth and the Statue of Liberty’s family. Executives also consulted a committee to examine the reactions of thousands of consumers.
Rubel said the company believes it won’t have to do much work to connect new ads because consumers have already heard the phrase “vaibati.” “We don’t create a mascot and hope it sticks,” she says. “We’re just taking something that people already know and repeat and giving it a bigger role in the world.”
Liberty isn’t elevating Liberty at the expense of other established spokes characters. Viewers who follow the company’s commercials may have a new encounter with LiMu Emu and Doug.
