Nationwide Gets Serious With Julia Roberts

Nationwide is ditching its "world's greatest spokesperson in the world" funny man and will take on a more serious tone with a new spot, Anthem, featuring voice over by Julia Roberts. Kicking off on NBC during the Summer Olympics, the one minute commercial, created by McKinney, will have Roberts asking viewers to "join a different kind of insurance company."

Bolstering the television will be radio, print and online efforts fueling the increasingly crowded insurance marketplace currently dominated by Allstate, Progressive, Farmers and Geico.

Of the campaign's shift, Nationwide Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Matthew Jauchius said, "When you have a competitor spending over a billion dollars on ads, which we do, you have to break through the clutter in a relevant way. We are going against the grain in the marketplace by taking a more sincere tone, an authentic tone...rather than just a yuk with a phone number, which seems to characterize our category today."