Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance Reframes Adulthood in Old You Now You
Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance released "Old You/Now You" as a two-part film campaign in February 2018, created by Young & Laramore, using the universal moment of becoming one's parents to make insurance coverage feel personally relevant to adults across the United States.
The campaign comprises two distinct executions archived at adsoftheworld.com: "Old You/Now You – Mom" and "Old You/Now You – Dad." Each film draws a pointed contrast between a person's younger, carefree self and their present-day, responsibility-laden identity — the version who now worries about property, family, and financial protection. The creative mechanism is elegantly simple. By mirroring the viewer's own biographical trajectory, the spots reposition insurance not as an abstract product sold through fear but as a logical extension of who adults inevitably become. The campaign targets Hoosier families and working adults across the United States who have crossed the threshold into genuine financial responsibility, whether through homeownership, parenthood, or both.
The work sits within the long-running "Stop Knocking on Wood" brand platform, which Young & Laramore developed with Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance following consumer research conducted nearly a decade before 2015, according to yandl.com. That platform established a tone of wry, self-aware pragmatism — acknowledging that adults know risk is real without resorting to catastrophe-driven messaging. "Old You/Now You" deepens that voice by grounding it in lived experience rather than hypothetical peril. The campaign was published in the United States in February 2018 and is documented in the Clapboard archive with a Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100, reflecting competent strategic alignment and a recognisable creative idea within a category that rarely rewards creative ambition.
Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance occupies a specific competitive position in the United States market. The brand serves Indiana residents and competes not only against regional carriers but against nationally scaled advertisers including State Farm and Allstate, both of which command substantial share-of-voice through celebrity-led campaigns and saturation media buying. Against that backdrop, Young & Laramore's strategic choice to lean into identity rather than price or product breadth is a deliberate act of differentiation.
The insight powering "Old You/Now You" is grounded in a psychological truth rather than a market statistic: the moment adults recognise themselves in their parents' behaviour is the same moment they become genuinely receptive to conversations about protection and planning. Consumer research conducted by Young & Laramore, which originally produced the "Stop Knocking on Wood" tagline, established that Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance's core audience responds to honesty and self-recognition over polished aspiration, according to yandl.com. The 2018 executions apply that research to a specific life-stage inflection point.
In the United States, the property and casualty insurance segment grew an estimated 4.7% in 2018, according to Allianz. North America represented the largest regional insurance market globally that year, with approximately €1.201 trillion in premiums, also according to Allianz. Within that environment, regional and mutual insurers face mounting pressure to justify their relevance against nationally advertised alternatives. Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance's response, channelled through Young & Laramore since the agency became agency of record in 2010 per yandl.com, is to compete on emotional specificity rather than scale — a strategy the "Old You/Now You" films execute with structural discipline.
The creative execution of "Old You/Now You" relies on contrast as its primary rhetorical device. Each of the two films — one centred on a mother figure, one on a father — builds its argument by intercutting the subject's former self with their present behaviour, making the transformation both comedic and quietly inevitable. The creative team used the structural tension between past and present identity to do the persuasive work that a conventional insurance brief might have assigned to statistics or testimonial.
Executive Creative Director Carolyn Hadlock led the creative development, according to yandl.com, with Creative Director Trevor Williams shaping the executional framework. Principal Writer Charlie Hopper authored the scripts, bringing the kind of character-specific dialogue that distinguishes observed human behaviour from advertising approximation. Art Director Kyle Nordsiek handled the visual architecture of the spots. Additional creative contributions came from Writer Aidan McKiernan and Senior Designer Daniel Vuyovich, with account leadership provided by VP of Account Management and Account Director Nick Prihoda, all per yandl.com and adsoftheworld.com.
The decision to produce two separate executions — one for "Mom" and one for "Dad" — rather than a single gender-neutral spot is itself a creative and strategic choice. It allows each film to carry a more specific set of observed behaviours and comedic beats, increasing the chance that any given viewer finds one execution uncannily accurate. The tone throughout remains warm rather than mocking, which is essential for a brand whose relationship with its audience depends on trust. The "Stop Knocking on Wood" platform, documented as active as far back as a 2014 "Slow Knock: Pool" spot per commarts.com, provides the tonal permission structure within which "Old You/Now You" operates — wry, grounded, and fundamentally respectful of the audience's intelligence.
No verified performance data for the "Old You/Now You" campaign is publicly available. No sales lift figures, policy growth numbers, brand-tracking shifts, or lead generation metrics have been documented in connection with the two 2018 executions across Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum, Campaign, or WARC. No award records were found across Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, Clio Awards, Webby Awards, or the WARC Awards.
Structural analysis offers a credible substitute for absent metrics. The campaign's core mechanism — identity recognition — is among the most reliable triggers of personal relevance in advertising, particularly in financial services categories where emotional distance between the viewer and the product is a persistent creative problem. By anchoring each film to a moment every adult has experienced, the work short-circuits the usual resistance to insurance messaging without requiring the viewer to imagine a worst-case scenario. That is a functionally sound approach, and it aligns with the consumer insight that originally produced the "Stop Knocking on Wood" platform, as documented by yandl.com.
Young & Laramore's tenure as Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance's agency of record since 2010, per yandl.com, itself suggests a productive commercial relationship, though that continuity cannot be attributed solely to any individual campaign. The Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100 reflects a campaign that delivers on its strategic brief with a recognisable human insight but stops short of the kind of creative risk-taking that generates broader industry recognition or documented cultural traction.
Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance released Old You/Now You as a two-part film campaign in February 2018, created by Young & Laramore in the United States. The two executions — Mom and Dad — use the moment adults recognise themselves in their parents to make insurance coverage feel personally relevant and timely.
Young & Laramore created the Old You/Now You campaign. The Indianapolis-based agency has served as Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance's agency of record since 2010, according to yandl.com. Carolyn Hadlock served as Executive Creative Director, with Trevor Williams as Creative Director and Charlie Hopper as Principal Writer.
Old You/Now You sits within the Stop Knocking on Wood brand platform developed by Young & Laramore. That platform originated from consumer research conducted nearly a decade before 2015, according to yandl.com. A 2014 spot titled Slow Knock: Pool is among the earlier documented executions within the same campaign architecture.
No award records for Old You/Now You have been found across Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, Clio Awards, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards. The campaign is documented in the Clapboard archive and carries a Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100, indicating solid strategic execution without documented industry recognition.
Executive Creative Director Carolyn Hadlock and Creative Director Trevor Williams led the creative team at Young & Laramore. Charlie Hopper wrote the scripts and Kyle Nordsiek served as Art Director, according to yandl.com and adsoftheworld.com. Writer Aidan McKiernan and Senior Designer Daniel Vuyovich also contributed to the project.
The campaign targeted adults in the United States, specifically Indiana residents at key life-stage milestones such as parenthood and homeownership. It launched in February 2018 within a US property and casualty insurance segment that grew an estimated 4.7% that year, according to Allianz, making relevance-driven creative a viable competitive tool.
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