True Stories Focus of New State Farm(R) Ad Campaign

BLOOMINGTON, Ill., Oct. 21, 2004 -- State Farm's new auto ad campaign, True Stories, will launch during sports programming, Saturday, October 23rd, on FOX at 8:00 p.m. EDT. The ads focus on the value of State Farm and how it feels to have an agent on your side to immediately begin recovering from the unexpected. These spots illustrate the personal care State Farm customers experience and feature real agents telling true stories of how they helped policyholders when they were most needed.

The goal of the campaign is to acknowledge while all auto insurers compete on price, no company can match the service provided by State Farm's dedicated, professional agency and claims forces.

"State Farm's agents and the way we settle claims have always been our strengths," said Mark Gibson, assistant vice president for advertising at State Farm. "State Farm agents do the ordinary in extraordinary ways. We wanted to show those consumers shopping for a better value on car insurance what it feels like to be taken care of by State Farm."

The campaign is being executed simultaneously across all segments of the market. It includes two general market spots, an Hispanic and African American spot, and two in-language Asian spots, one each in Cantonese and Mandarin.

The campaign will air on high profile network and cable programming in the U.S for the remainder of 2004 and throughout 2005.

DDB Chicago, State Farm's long-time advertising partner, developed the general market spots in conjunction with State Farm's multicultural ad agencies, DRM/DDB (Hispanic), Spike/DDB (African American) and interTREND Communications (Asian). In addition to the television ads, the campaign includes a direct mail component which has been developed by DRAFT.

State Farm(R) insures more cars than any other insurer in North America and is the leading U.S. home insurer. State Farm's 17,000 agents and 71,000 employees serve nearly 73 million auto, fire, life and health policies in the United States and Canada. State Farm also offers financial services products through State Farm Bank(R). State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company is the parent of the State Farm family of companies. State Farm is ranked No. 18 on the Fortune 500 list of largest companies. For more information, please visit http://www.statefarm.com/ (R) or in Canada http://www.statefarm.ca/ .