An Ohio farm organisation goes into car insurance.

Nationwide began as an insurer for farmers in a single state. English Wikipedia says the Ohio Farm Bureau decided in the 1920s to set up its own company to insure the cars of its members, and that on 10 April 1926 the Farm Bureau Mutual Automobile Insurance Company obtained a licence to do business in Ohio. Two days later, Wikipedia says, the new company secured its starting finance through a loan drawn from the Farm Bureau’s membership, and on 14 April 1926, the date the company gives as its founding, it began writing policies. Its president from 1926 to 1928, according to the list of chief executives Wikipedia compiles, was Lee B. Palmer.

As its name said, the company’s product was automobile insurance, and initially it wrote policies only for Ohio farmers who belonged to the Farm Bureau. Wikipedia records that it expanded into West Virginia in 1928, then into Maryland, Delaware, Vermont and North Carolina. It began insuring residents of small towns in 1931 and of larger cities in 1934, the year it also began offering fire insurance. In 1935 it acquired a life insurer from the bankrupt fraternal society American Insurance Union, renaming it Farm Bureau Life Insurance Company in 1938.

The company grew up in downtown Columbus. Wikipedia says it moved in 1936 into the building at 246 North High Street, later tripled the space there, and began opening regional offices in 1951 when even that was not enough.

In 1955, Wikipedia says, Farm Bureau Mutual changed its name to Nationwide. Wikipedia records that in the following decade the company expanded into Oregon and many other states. Wikipedia’s infobox gives Farm Bureau Mutual Automobile Insurance Company as the former name for the years 1926 to 1955.

A plaza, an arena and a series name.

The name is also on the Columbus skyline. Wikipedia says Nationwide had outgrown the High Street building by the 1970s and that One Nationwide Plaza, a skyscraper at the corner of North High Street and Nationwide Boulevard on the northern edge of downtown, was completed in 1978. Further Nationwide plazas followed nearby from 1988, and One Nationwide Plaza remains the company’s headquarters. The New York Daily News, reporting on the company’s advertising in May 2021, described it as Columbus, Ohio-headquartered.

Sport carried the name further. Wikipedia says that after a plan to bring a hockey team to Columbus failed at the ballot box, Nationwide announced it would build an arena next to One Nationwide Plaza, and the Columbus Blue Jackets began play at Nationwide Arena in late 2000. The company also sponsors the Major League Soccer club Columbus Crew, whose shirts have carried its name since 2020, Wikipedia says. Nationally, Wikipedia records that Nationwide became title sponsor of NASCAR’s second-tier series, renamed the Nationwide Series, from the 2008 season, and announced on 18 September 2013 that it would end that sponsorship after 2014 while remaining a NASCAR sponsor; from 2015 to 2019 it was a primary sponsor of the driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. It was presenting sponsor of the PGA Tour’s Memorial Tournament from 2010 until 2021.

The Columbus Dispatch reported on 5 June 2019 that Kirt Walker, who had joined Nationwide in 1986 and had run its financial services business since 2009, would succeed Steve Rasmussen as chief executive on 1 October that year, reporting until then to Rasmussen and to the board chairman, Tim Corcoran.

The Chicago Tribune reported on 2 February 2015 that a Nationwide Super Bowl advertisement about preventable childhood accidents, voiced by Julia Roberts with the line “make safe happen”, drew a strongly negative reaction on social media, and quoted a company vice president, Joe Case, saying its aim had been to raise awareness of the cause.

Design and documentation.

Bank identity lives in a narrow set of places, and each one sets its own constraints. Exterior signage has to read from a moving car or across a street, so marks are usually reduced to a short name or initials, a single colour field and a simple geometric symbol that can be lit from behind or cut from metal. Inside a branch, the same identity is translated into carpet, wall graphics, counter fronts, queue barriers and printed leaflets, where a strong brand colour is often used as an accent rather than a full flood.

Payment cards bring a different discipline. The design has to share a small rectangle with a chip, a card-network mark, embossed or printed numbers and a contactless symbol, so the bank’s own mark is often pushed to a corner or set as a quiet pattern. App icons compress the system further still: a rounded square a few millimetres wide, where a monogram or symbol on a flat colour has to stand out on a crowded phone screen. Reading a bank brand well means following one mark through all four of these settings and noticing what changes and what is kept constant.

A name, a logo and seven notes.

A large part of the Nationwide identity is a tune rather than a picture. Writing for Billboard in a report Reuters carried on 25 July 2008, Kamau High identified the jingle writer Steve Karmen as the author of the 1969 jingle “Call Nationwide, ’cause Nationwide is on your side”, and said it was still in use. Wikipedia adds that a slogan beginning “The Man from Nationwide is on your side” was introduced in 1965, set to music in 1969, and shortened in 1972, when the words “the Man from” were dropped and “Nationwide is on your side” became the slogan; it says signs, letterheads, advertisements and business cards were changed to match.

The tune has since been passed from singer to singer. The New York Daily News reported on 5 May 2021 that the R&B singer Jill Scott was the new voice of the jingle and had written new songs built on its seven notes, for a campaign the company called “On Your Side Soundtracks” on broadcast, social and digital channels. The paper listed earlier performers in the company’s advertising, including Tori Kelly, Rachel Platten, Brad Paisley and Leslie Odom Jr., and quoted the company’s marketing chief, Ramon Jones, calling Scott an ambassador for the brand. Wikipedia’s list of jingle performers also includes Jana Kramer and the former football quarterback Peyton Manning.

The visual mark has been redrawn more than once. Wikipedia illustrates a previous Nationwide logo it captions as used from 1999 to September 2014, and the current logo, which it captions as in use since 2014.

For a design guide, Nationwide shows how a sound can carry a brand as firmly as a logo: seven notes written in 1969 have been sung by one performer after another while the logo was redrawn. Compare it with U.S. Bank, another Midwestern financial name built through renaming, and American Express, a financial brand also known for long-running advertising. For this guide we use plaza blue, field sky and policy white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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