This is a short YouTube talk (uploaded Jan 16, 2021) describing how McKeel Hagerty, CEO of Hagerty Insurance, deliberately built a fandom-centered marketing strategy for a product category people dislike (auto insurance). Tactics included attending hundreds of classic car shows, producing Hagerty Magazine, running a popular YouTube channel/series (“Why We Drive”), offering valuation reports and a drivers club, and creating the Hagerty Insider live-auction app. Claimed outcomes: ~780,000 YouTube subscribers, ~600,000 drivers-club members, sustained double-digit compound growth, and an expectation of 200,000 new customers in the year referenced.
Questions this video answers
780,000 subscribers.
600,000 members.
Hagerty Insider.
200,000 new customers.
"Double digit compound growth every single year" (as stated in the video).
Chapters
Do you love to buy auto insurance? I've asked that question of thousands of people and there's no one who answers yes if they love to buy auto insurance. I had someone say to me, insurance sucks. Nobody likes to buy insurance. It's not fun. And that was McKeel Haggerty. He's the CEO of an insurance company. So when you have a business that everybody hates you, you can't market in the same way that everybody's marketing. McKiel Haggerty knew he had to do something completely different. He knew he had to do something different. And what he did was he said, we're going to go out and build fans. We're going to go out and create a culture that has fans. Mikhail Haggerty said, everyone hates the product I sell. I can't sell in the same way. So they specifically went out and cultivated fandom. So Hagerty sells insurance for classic cars. So what they did was they went to classic car shows and they still do this, hundreds of classic car shows each year. And they do education, they have a booth. They share great information physically with their customers about classic cars. They have a magazine, the Hagerty Magazine, which is all about classic cars that they send out to people. They have a fabulous YouTube channel. And that YouTube channel have, has many, many people who are watching them. I'm going to share with you one of those YouTube videos right now. Oh, look at this. Oh, man, here we go again. This is a dre. My name is John Rood. Josh Gold. I'm Dustin Frist. And I'm Courtney Frist. And this is why we drive. This channel has 780,000 subscribers. May I remind you, this is an insurance company with 780,000 subscribers of their YouTube channel. They have a valuation report where you could go on and learn about the values of classic cars. They have a driver's club with 600,000 members of their driver's club. They did something really clever for people who love classic cars and go to the auctions. There's a series of auctions every year in January in Scottsdale, Arizona. And the challenge with this particular auction week is there's multiple auctions going on at one time. Sotheby's, Goodings, Bonhams, Barrett Jackson. They're happening at the same time. The problem as a collector is you can't be at four auctions at once. So what Hagerty did, they're an insurance company. They're not in the auction business. They created a free app, Hagerty Insider, where you can actually see each of the cars at each of the auctions in real time as they're being sold and what the selling price is, so that if you happen to be at one auction, you're able to virtually see what's going on at those other auctions. I'm a fan of Haggerty. Yes. I am a fan of my insurance company. I own a 1973 Land Rover. It's insured by Hagerty. I love my insurance company. The idea that you can grow fans of any business, you can grow fans even in a business that every hates means this is an incredible opportunity for you. Here's what Mikhail Haggerty told me. He said, we went out and expressly challenged ourselves how can we build fans. We discovered we're pretty good at it. We have fun doing it. And it matters because that's our word of mouth growth engines. Here is the results of Hagerty. They're the largest classic car insurance company which they've become because of this focus on fandom. They've had double digit compound growth every single year that they've been in business. And this year they expect 200,000 new customers. This is the idea of fandom. This is the idea that can be implemented in any business. This is an idea that can be implemented in your business. How to grow by growing fans.