Amica Is Dropping a Dime with the Boston Celtics: “We Wanted to Go Beyond Visibility”

In many cases, sponsorship of a sports team can amount to a simple ‘badging’ exercise. Drumming up visibility for a brand by emblazoning it across the shirts and jerseys of a winning group of athletes in front of their legions of fans is, in marketing terms, a fairly blunt instrument. And it works. 

But in other instances, sponsorships go much deeper. They can establish a brand in the iconography of a team, and become a visible and relevant part of its supporters’ lives. The brand becomes a component of the team’s story, taking part in outreach events, joining the community around the team and even helping to grow it. That type of sponsorship takes ambition, imagination, and dedication – and it’s exactly what the mutual insurance provider Amica had in mind for its partnership with the Boston Celtics. 

That ambition is written all over the company’s work with the team so far. An anthemic film released in October coincided with the sponsorship’s launch, and declared that “Amica shows up for New England like New England shows up for the Celtics”. To find out why the film was the perfect way to set the tone for Amica’s position alongside the Celtics, LBB caught up with the brand’s SVP of marketing Tory Pachis, alongside Media by Mother’s head of content Paul Furia. 

“As a company, we’ve been on a brand-building journey over the past few years”, begins Tory. “We partnered with Paul and the rest of the team at Mother to achieve that, and something we learned early on was that we did have low awareness in the insurance category. We were seen as the ‘best kept secret’, but we didn’t want to be a secret anymore. So then we began to ask a clear and simple question: How do we grow our awareness within the insurance category?” 

The answer to that question would eventually lead Tory and Amica to the Boston Celtics, but not before some important fundamentals had been established. “Another objective we had was to purposefully build our brand in the New England market”, continues the marketing SVP. “It’s always been an important market for us – Amica is based in New England, and over 40% of our premium is here in New England. And on top of that, we wanted to connect with a younger consumer. Around half of the current NBA audience is under 35, so that was an important factor in our thinking, too”. 

For Paul, there was one more reason why the Boston Celtics would be such an exciting partner for Amica. “One thing that I’d add on top of this is that sport is quite frankly where all of these eyeballs are”, he says. “The media landscape has become so fragmented that it’s now hard to find instances where big, broad, and diverse groups of people actually come together to enjoy something. So a team that’s just come off a world championship win is a rare, unifying phenomenon for the wider community around it”. 

All of those are reasons why Amica benefits from having its brand be seen alongside the Boston Celtics. But as both Paul and Tory go on to explain, there’s a lot more to this partnership than just being seen. 

The Power of Sport

Sport isn’t like other kinds of sponsorship. As well as deep levels of attachment and devotion, there’s a defining sense of legacy behind a lot of sports franchises. For millions of us, the team we support existed before we were born, and will live on after we die. It’s perhaps the first thing we inherit from our parents as children, and something we eagerly pass on to the next generation. For Amica, that was a powerful sentiment that chimed perfectly with their own values and outlook. 

“From our perspective, Amica has been in business for over 100 years and an idea they share with the Celtics is that no legacy is given – it’s something that has to be earned through the buildup of trust”, explains Paul. “Plus, the Celtics bring families together in support of a team whilst Amica protects families. When you marry all of those themes together, you land on a message of excellence and empathy which connects perfectly with Amica”. 

In that sense, sports sponsorships aren’t just about seeing the brand – they’re saying something about the brand, too. “One of the first things Paul said to us when we started working with Mother was that we wanted to make news on the sports page and the front page alike”, recounts Tory. “To that end, we’re also partnering with the Shamrock Foundation – the Celtics’ nonprofit – to really focus on improving early childhood education centers in the New England area. As well as helping to flesh out Amica’s identity as a brand, that sense of purpose is also something we hope will connect with younger fans which, as I say, is a core objective behind the partnership as a whole”. 

Of course, part of sport’s power is also in its unpredictability. For every moment of shared glory and triumph, there’s another of frustration or heartbreak. But when asked whether such an emotional rollercoaster might represent a potential risk for Amica, Tory remains sanguine. “Hey, we’re an insurance provider”, he tells LBB. “Everything we do is a calculated risk”. 

Throughout our conversation, Tory and Paul return to the key themes behind the partnership: Relevance, reliability, legacy, and long-term thinking. At first glance, it’s easy to see why each of those might be invaluable qualities for an insurance provider to uphold. 

But below the surface, there are deeper reasons why that message is something that is resonating so profoundly right now. In a world that feels so chaotic and destabilised, sport is a pillar of constant stability in what Paul describes as a fragmented media landscape. For a brand that quite literally sells the concept of reassurance or peace-of-mind, that’s a powerful idea to be attached to. 

“This partnership is all about moving from words and campaigns to commitments and impact”, notes Tory. “Especially in sports, consumers really do demand authenticity from brands and it’s not enough to simply show people your logo and disappear. With this partnership, we’re aiming to be helping the community around the Celtics and across New England to thrive for years into the future”.