The OG "Jake from State Farm" Is Alive and Well, People

As always, the Super Bowl commercials received just as much attention as the big game itself, but only a few 2020 ads really lit up social media. One of them was State Farm’s 30-second spot, which put a new twist on an old classic.

Back in 2011, the company hit the jackpot with their "Jake from State Farm" commercial, featuring an actual agent who worked for the insurance provider at the time. The ad begins with a wife coming down the stairs in the middle of the night to discover her husband on the phone.

"Yeah, I’m married. Does it matter," the husband says quietly into the landline. "You’d do that for me? Really? I’d like that." Naturally, the wife wants to know who he’s talking to at three in the morning, but doesn’t believe him when he says it’s "Jake from State Farm."

She grabs the phone from her husband and asks, "What are you wearing 'Jake from State Farm?'" to which the agent replies, "Uh, kakis." The wife still isn’t convinced.

In State Farm’s 2020 take on the nine-year-old spot, the same couple is having the exact same argument, but this time, there’s a new Jake in the mix. "Uh, kakis," Jake 2.0 also answers before asking a co-worker, "Hey, do they ever ask you what you’re wearing?" Turns out, his colleague is none other than OG Jake!

"Uh, yeah," the original Jake from State Farm says, popping his head out of his cubicle. So yes, there is a new Jake from State Farm, but the former Jake is still being a good neighbor. 

It’s safe to say the Bloomington, Ill. resident had no idea what he was getting himself into when attending a casting call for State Farm employees. The then 26-year-old was selected to fly to California, where he shot several options for the commercial. 

The ad immediately went viral when it first aired in June of 2011. "I'm getting calls from friends from all over... New York, Florida," he told local newspaper The Pantagraph several months after the spot debuted. "They all say, 'I just saw a State Farm commercial. Are you really on TV?'"

According to a follow-up interview in 2014, Jake had quit his part-time job at State Farm and become a seasonal employee for the town of Normal, Ill. He also worked as a bartender at a place called Pub II. 

He would still get recognized, but admitted that life hadn’t changed that much for him. "As I put it to a friend, I'm just putting on my khakis, one leg at a time," he teased.

It’s unclear what Jake is doing now, but he was involved in a weird death hoax a few years ago. After an outlet alleged that his wife had killed him after she found him in bed with another woman, the official "Jake from State Farm" Twitter account denied the rumor. 

"Contrary to recent reports, I am alive. Thank you all for your concern," the tweet read. The internet is such a weird place.