Turning Customers Into Fans: The Fandom Playbook for Insurance Agents
David Meerman Scott opens speeches to executives, lawyers, and software company founders by asking the same question: Who’s a fan of auto insurance?
Nobody raises their hand.
Then he tells the story of Hagerty.
Scott is a bestselling author, marketing strategist, and longtime Hagerty customer. His 1973 Land Rover Series 3 has been insured by Hagerty for nearly 20 years. He’s also spent more than a decade using Hagerty as his primary example of how a business in a category people actively dislike can build millions of genuine fans. In a recent conversation on The Accelerator, he shared why fandom matters, what the neuroscience behind it actually tells us, and how agents can use these ideas right now.
What a Fan Actually Is (and Why It’s Different from a Customer)
A customer is transactional: they give you money, you give them coverage. A fan is something else entirely.
When Scott was recently approached by a competitor offering to insure his Land Rover for significantly less, his answer was a flat no. He’s a fan of Hagerty, and that loyalty is worth more than any rate comparison.
That’s the core value of fandom: it replaces price sensitivity with preference. Fans refer you without being asked, welcome new offerings, and give you the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong. For agents, the question isn’t whether clients are fans of insurance, they’re not. The question is whether they can become fans of you.
The Neuroscience Behind Human Connection
Scott’s research developed alongside his daughter Reiko, a Columbia-trained neuroscientist turned ER doctor. Their research revealed that fandom isn’t a soft concept. It’s rooted in how our brains are wired.
Humans are hardwired to feel safe around their tribe. That instinct is exactly why a Cars & Coffee event feels comfortable. You can walk up to anyone, even the owner of a six-figure car, because you’re part of the same world. Proximity matters too: a conversation inside someone’s personal space (four feet or fewer) creates a bond that a quote form never will. That’s one reason showing up at car events and club gatherings has such a disproportionate return.
The same logic applies to video. Mirror neurons mean that when someone watches you on screen, their brain responds as if they’ve actually met you. It’s why we feel we “know” people we’ve only seen on television and why agents willing to use video can build genuine connection at scale.
The Most Surprising Insight: Share What You Love
Scott’s team studied professional service providers like agents, doctors, lawyers and dentists. Nearly all of them had built a wall between their personal and professional lives. At home, they were passionate and dimensional. At work, buttoned-up and generic.
Breaking down that wall, Scott argues, is one of the most powerful things an agent can do. He shares the story of Dr. John Marashi, a dentist in Los Angeles who leaned into his lifelong love of skateboarding by putting boards on his office walls, skate photos on his website, and building an Instagram that now has over 50,000 followers. In his first year as “the skateboarding dentist,” he saw a 30% increase in new patients and 23% revenue growth. Not because skateboarders found him, but because people are drawn to passion... any passion.
The insight for agents is that you don’t need to love cars to connect with car enthusiasts. You just need to be genuinely passionate about something and willing to let people see it. As Scott puts it, clients are attracted to people who love life.
One Play From the Playbook: Make It a Game
Scott’s newest book, The Fandom Playbook, identifies nine specific plays for building fans. One that translates naturally to an agent’s world is to "make it a game." A scuba resort owner in Grand Cayman couldn’t figure out why happy guests never came back, so he created a 55-dive-site challenge. Complete all 55 and you earn a named plaque on the dock, a party, and a pair of exclusive shorts. Since the average trip covers about a week of dives, finishing the challenge means returning four or five times.
The lesson isn’t to create dive challenges. It’s to design experiences that give clients a reason to stay engaged and come back. Fandom doesn’t happen automatically but it starts with showing up, being genuinely human, and giving people something to care about beyond the policy.
Want to hear the full conversation?
In this episode of The Accelerator, David Meerman Scott joins hosts John Gessner and Bryant Kolle to dig into the neuroscience of human connection, why Hagerty is his go-to example of fandom in business, and how agents can stop competing on price and start building loyal clients who refer without being asked. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on Hagerty’s agent channels. Free resources at fandom.marketing.
