Protect your crash with the ‘Stache’

By Greg Peters

ELLSWORTH – For most every huge corporation, business branding is big business. Billions of dollars are spent annually trying to focus an all-encompassing message connecting the company to its customers. American Family Insurance is no different. The Madison, Wis., based company has used the “All Your Protection Under Our Roof” for decades and, more recently, they’ve pivoted to the “Insure Carefully, Dream Fearlessly.”

American Family Insurance brand ambassadors, as they call them, have been Wisconsin sports celebrities such as Edgerton’s own PGA professional Steve Stricker, the Packers’ Jordan Love, and the Brewers’ Christian Yelich. On a more national scale, Hall of Famer and former New York Yankee Derek Jeter and supermodel Kathy Ireland have endorsed the company that started as Farmers Mutual Automobile Insurance Company in 1927 and changed its name in 1963.

On-line marketing statistics have long been reporting close to 70% of financial decision-makers in U.S. households are women. If this fact is even close to being accurate, it may make business branding sense why HGTV’s “Property Brothers” stars Jonathan and Drew Scott are American Family’s newest branding ambassadors.   

The American Family Insurance corporate office likely has an entire floor, if not a building, dedicated to housing branding and marketing geniuses.

For the local Jared Hines American Family Insurance office in Ellsworth, branding is more push-broom than Roomba. More upper-lipholstery than rich Corinthian leather. More face lace than Chantilly lace. Jared Hines’ local branding is the brainchild of his father-in-law, Curtis Kees.  

When Curtis’ wife, Justina Lansing, the mother-in-law and employee of Jared, asked Curtis for his best business theme idea for the Pierce County Fair parade last summer, Curtis handed off the bristle baton with ease.

“That’s easy,” Curtis told Justina. “Do a mustache theme.”

“I went on Amazon and ordered all these sticky mustaches and stapled them to his business cards,” said Lansing. “We did hundreds of them.”

“The mustaches were a big hit,” said Hines with a laugh. “People had fun with it.”

After the parade was over, Curtis came up with the grass grin slogan, “Protect Your Crash with the ‘Stache.” Employee Phaedra Raethke brought a stuffed animal sasquatch into the office. His name is Stache the Sasquatch.

“This is Stache the Sasquatch and he has a mustache, too,” said Raethke.

“Phaedra definitely makes it fun,” said Lansing.

One key ingredient keeping the Jared Hines’ American Family lip sweater marketing hotter than an actual wool sweater in July is the fact the mustache wasn’t a gimmick or a novelty. Hines has sported the cookie duster for years.

“I had a beard for a long time because I always got carded and my wife didn’t,” said Hines who graduated from Ellsworth High School in 2011. “So I did it for her and so I didn’t look like I was 12. She’d (wife, Kylie) get mad if I got rid of it.”

Hines graduated from UW-Stout with a degree in engineering and was a manufacturing engineer for 3M in Red Wing. In February 2023, his aunt, Joanne Hines, told him she was retiring and asked if he would like to take over her American Family Insurance agency. Joanne Hines ran the business from 1993 to 2023. Jared’s grandfather, Jack Hines, ran the same business in the same building from 1959-1995 when it was still Farmers Mutual and was one of the first American Family agents in the country in 1963. Jared’s great-great grandfather, J.S. Hines, started it all, again, in the same building in 1928 selling wind insurance to local farmers alongside an auction business.

“I told my aunt (Joanne Hines) absolutely not,” said Jared when she first approached him about keeping the business in the family. “I liked my 3M job, but my dad told me if I didn’t, the Hines Insurance Agency would be gone five years short of 100 years. I took a look at it and here I am.

“It’s different challenges (insurance business as opposed to manufacturing business), but I get to deal with different people every day and I like that. Ellsworth is a loyal town and we have customers that have been with us for 50 years or more.”

Jared, sporting the full beard almost five years ago, volunteered to be a member of the River Falls Fire Department.

“They’re (RFFD) strict and you can’t have a beard because the air mask won’t seal properly, so I just kept the mustache,” said Jared.

Newly minted River Falls Fire Chief Justin Wilson has also rocked a cookie duster in the past.

“Justin is a great guy and I’m proud of him,” said Jared. “He’s going to be a great chief and maybe he’ll bring the mustache back.”

During the very initial interview request, Ellsworth Hubber Chad Melstrom was in the office collecting a sponsor check from Jared. River Falls High School softball recently received a new press box window, as part of a collective donation from numerous local businesses, the Hines Insurance Agency being one of them.

“My grandfather seemed like he was a part of almost every organization,” said Jared. “You name it, he was probably involved in it with his time or donations. The insurance industry ebbs and flows with rates and I can’t control that, but as long as we care about our community, the community will care about us. That’s the way I see it.”

Driving into Ellsworth on Highway 10, an American Family Insurance billboard greets travelers. The gentleman on the billboard, Jared Hines, has a glorious and powerful mustache. If the mustache is a driving distraction for onlookers, it can a good reminder to “Protect Your Crash with the ‘Stache.”