A Commercial Star Is Born
As Liberty Mutual’s Doug, comedic actor David Hoffman cuts up opposite an emu in a now-iconic ad campaign
Photos by Patrick Strattner
A Commercial Star Is Born
As Liberty Mutual’s Doug, comedic actor David Hoffman cuts up opposite an emu in a now-iconic ad campaign
David Hoffman was eating lunch by himself on the set of his new ad campaign when it sunk in that his life would never be the same again. Over the past two decades, the comedic actor had been a lead in a short-lived British television series, played a few major roles in television shows and some minor roles in blockbuster films, and appeared in a couple of Super Bowl commercials—but he’d never broken through as a star. Until now. He had just landed a promising role as Doug, a sometimes hapless, always funny insurance salesman with an emu as a sidekick, in a series of commercials for insurance giant Liberty Mutual. As Hoffman ate, a marketing executive for Liberty approached, her smile wide.
“I’ve just got to tell you we are loving everything you’re doing. We’re so happy,” she told Hoffman (’99). “You’re going to be an icon, like Tony the Tiger.”
That was December 2018, and the executive wasn’t wrong. Six years later, Hoffman’s Doug is ubiquitous. You almost can’t turn on a game or stream an episode without hearing the commercials’ earworm jingle. Open your mailbox, and there’s probably a Liberty Mutual mailing with Doug and his emu. The insurance guy’s yellow shirt, trademark mustache, and aviator sunglasses are plastered across billboards and web ads—always with pointy-beaked LiMu Emu, of course.
David Hoffman plays Liberty Mutual’s mustachioed insurance spokesman Doug. Courtesy of Liberty Mutual
The sudden success was a whirlwind for Hoffman, who Googled “LiMu Emu and Doug” shortly after shooting the first spots and snapped a screenshot of the results. (There were none at the time, but that would change.) The actor who’d once played Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice at CFA was now the face of a Fortune 100 insurance company, his comedic performances responsible for millions of daily brand impressions. More important for Hoffman, the role brought financial security and creative independence. But like many actors, Hoffman’s path here was dotted with plenty of starts, stops, and rejection.
“I never expected to be in the exact position I’m in right now,” Hoffman says. “I had so many different visions of what would happen, and there were so many valleys where what I wanted and expected didn’t happen. And yet, in the end, I’m in a sweet spot as an actor, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Making of an Actor
Hoffman, who is married and has a young son, says he mapped out his entire career while he was an undergraduate theater major at CFA: “I was going to do four years at BU, was going to kill it at the [School of Theatre] Showcase, get the best agent in the business, be on a show within six months that would go for about five years, transition to movies, win an Oscar.”
Hoffman was so excited to move to New York City and start that journey that he skipped his graduation ceremony.
“You’re always in a play, always rehearsing, always training, and it was very intensive and time-consuming, in a good way,” he says of CFA. “I was consumed by it, which is why I think so many actors come out of programs like that obsessed with their career.”
Then reality hit. After almost a year without a single acting job in the Big Apple, Hoffman followed a friend and cheaper rents out to Los Angeles. He started taking sketch comedy classes with the Groundlings, the improv-based theater troupe where stars like Jon Lovitz, Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig, and Melissa McCarthy earned their comedic stripes. Hoffman spent four years in the training program before he made the Groundlings’ Sunday Company. “It’s like [Saturday Night Live],” he says. “You write a new show every single week, and we had no weeks off. I did it for two years. It was 104 weeks in a row writing new shows and material, and you really learn to write for yourself.” After two years of grinding it out in the Sunday Company, Hoffman made the Main Company—an achievement he was told just one in 10,000 students enjoy.
In 2008, Hoffman’s fellow Groundling Stephanie Courtney appeared as Flo in a single ad for Progressive Insurance. His interest was piqued. “It was not a campaign, it was one spot,” Hoffman recalls. “She was like, ‘I think they want to do a bunch more of them.’ And then she said they were negotiating an actual deal. And it was so exciting. These were numbers I had never fathomed.” While Hoffman’s prior commercial work had included individual spots for Bud Light, Nicorette, and Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia, he says “Steph’s role as Flo was my first exposure to how big a deal a campaign can be.” (Courtney is in her 16th year playing Flo in the Progressive ads.)
Hoffman’s commercial agent started getting the actor campaign auditions. Success was fleeting at first. Campaigns he shot for Taco Bell and Virgin Mobile never aired. By 2012, as he experienced some noncommercial success playing a guest role in the film Bridesmaids and recurring roles in the television series 2 Broke Girls, New Girl, and Quick Draw, Hoffman says he was burned out on the commercial grind. “I wrote it down: Within two years, I’m not auditioning for commercials anymore,” he says. Sure enough, two years later, in 2014, he was cast as the lead in the UK sitcom I Live with Models—which aired on Comedy Central—allowing him to comfortably leave behind his pursuit of commercial success. Or so he thought.
Embodying Doug
It was Thanksgiving week 2018, and Hoffman was moping around. I Live with Models ended after two seasons in 2017, so he’d been unemployed for more than a year. With his savings running low and no new gigs lined up leading into the holidays, he knew it would be January or February before he could hope to be working again. At the recommendation of his new girlfriend (and now wife), Jaime, Hoffman reached out to his commercial agent. He asked him to keep an eye out for something that suits him, perhaps a funny Super Bowl commercial or a new campaign. “Call me after Thanksgiving,” the agent told Hoffman.
The sudden success of the Liberty Mutual ad campaign featuring Doug and his emu sidekick was a shock for actor David Hoffman, the actor who plays Doug. Courtesy of Liberty Mutual
The two men met for lunch the next week, where Hoffman laid out his conditions for an ad campaign: He wanted it to be funny, obviously. To not look like himself. To be able to improvise. To work with a director he respects. “He just started laughing,” Hoffman recalls, “and he pushed me his phone. ‘What do you think of this?’”
It was a casting agency’s description of Doug, a likable and funny insurance guy who does all of the talking for his partner, a live emu. Doug could feasibly be the face of the brand for years to come, so that face would need to be memorable, and the actor would need to possess comedy chops and a strong presence onscreen.
Hoffman loved it. The concept of partnering with an emu, who is really the brains of the operation, fit his comedic style, which he calls “absurd realism.” The agent landed Hoffman an audition that evening—the last day the director was meeting actors. “I looked at him before I left and said, ‘I’m getting this. I guarantee it,’” he says.
Soon, Hoffman found himself in the Universal Studios lot standing opposite a live emu and shooting the first several spots of what would become Liberty’s longest-running ad campaign in the company’s 112-year history. Liberty executives knew they had a hit on their hands and made a historically large ad buy of those first spots. They started writing and shooting additional commercials for their new flagship campaign.
The LiMu Emu & Doug campaign has everything Hoffman was looking for, including the opportunity to stretch his sketch and improv muscles. The actor regularly punches up scripts with his own ideas and humor, and he rarely completes two takes the same way. “It really is about being able to snap into a new reality as quickly as possible and commit to it 100 percent,” Hoffman says. “I mean, when I would do spots with the emu, I was really improvising. You can’t predict what those things are going to do.”
One of many ad spots featuring LiMu Emu and Doug. Liberty Mutual
Three emus on set play the part of LiMu, but their unpredictability in the 2018 shoot led to the decision to film nearly all the emu’s scenes separate from Hoffman’s using a green screen.
Despite having achieved Tony the Tiger-esque prominence, the clean-shaven Hoffman is almost never recognized in public as his Liberty character—one of his original conditions, so he can play roles where he’s not seen as Doug (unlike, perhaps, Flo from Progressive). Still, the role has given Hoffman the financial and creative freedom to write for himself. He’s preparing to shoot his first feature-length screenplay—“the funniest thing I’ve ever written”—and directs an annual charity improv show with other comics each June at The Groundlings Theater in L.A. Performers at the 2024 show, which has raised more than $235,000 for the Hollywood Food Coalition over its three years, included Oscar Nuñez (“Oscar” from The Office), SNL alumnus Will Forte, and Flo herself, Stephanie Courtney. He’s also returned to Boston as Doug twice in 2024 for Liberty Mutual employees at their national headquarters.
“[This campaign] has completely changed my life,” Hoffman says. “I have a one-year-old son, and he’s having a much better start to life than I did. I can spend a lot of time with him, which I know a lot of parents don’t get a chance to do—especially actor parents. It’s changed my family life, it’s changed my career, it’s changed everything. I’m in a sweet spot.”
