GEICO advertising campaigns

GEICO's advertising campaign strategy incorporates a saturation-level amount of print (primarily mail circulars) and television parody advertisements, as well as radio advertisements. A common tagline used by GEICO is "fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance."

Warren Buffett, owner of GEICO parent Berkshire Hathaway, has stated that over 40% of Americans could save money with GEICO. He has indicated that he would spend $2 billion on GEICO ads if he could,^[1] far exceeding the $751 million in advertising in 2007, the last year where data were available.^[2]

Contents 1 Animated advertisements 2 Individual advertisements 3 The GEICO Gecko 4 Parodies 4.1 "I've got good news" 4.2 Bland salesman 5 Blueprint commercials 6 Celebrities 7 Cavemen 8 My Great Rides 9 GEICO Racing 10 15 Minutes Online 11 TRS: The Real Scoop 12 The money you could be saving 13 Talking inanimate objects 14 Rhetorical Questions Campaign 14.1 Television ads 14.2 Radio ads 15 Short Stories and Tall Tales 16 Xtranormal 17 Easier Way to Save 18 References

Animated advertisements

As part of the early GEICO Direct ads and the "Dumb Things" campaign, those 15 second long commercials were animated by Bill Plympton, and feature a curious little man walking up to an object and end up getting hurt after being curious about the object (for example, he encounters a cannon, presses a button, and a ball fires and sticks to his face).

Individual advertisements

GEICO has presented a number of memorable one shot ads. Amongst these are:

• A duck (similar to the Aflac duck) says, "Am I on? (clears throat) GEICO could save you hundreds of money on car insurance. Result..." The duck then removes his bill, revealing a smaller one, whilst saying in a high-pitched voice, "...Smaller bill."
• A man, whose insurance company didn't offer a loaner car left his house whilst covered in magnets and "bummed a ride" by attaching himself to a passing car.
• A man's dog wears a fire proximity suit as he delivers a competing insurance company's bill because it is "too hot to handle".
• As an example of other companies' poor customer service, a man in a diner tells a waitress he didn't order mayo on his sandwich, at which point she scrapes it off onto the side of the table.
• To showcase GEICO's 24-hour customer service, GEICO employees are shown wearing beer helmets with cups of coffee attached to them instead of beer, along with a comparison of a regular insurance company's small coffee mug and GEICO's big coffee mug.
• A police unit tracks down an apparent earthquake, only to find the source is an obese man joyously jumping up and down over the money that GEICO saved him.
• A man hires a team of bloodhounds to find his Acme Insurance agent after hours, only to find a terrified janitor in the building.
• A man looks at his most recent auto insurance bill with his dog at his side; the dog, finding out his owner spent way too much money rolls on the floor laughing.
• A man places a long-distance collect phone call through an operator, using the code name Bob Wehaddababyitsaboy to avoid having the call's recipient billed for the call's charges. This commercial ran for a few weeks with the name joke and the pitch for GEICO, followed by a parting shot of the man on the telephone further exploiting his name trick, saying "Last name is Wehadababyitsaboyandweighs8pounds3ouncesandisdoingfine". The commercial was later re-edited to remove the ending joke and add "Don't cheat the telephone company, save money the legal way with GEICO" in its place.
• A squirrel causes a car to swerve and crash off screen and performs a series of fist bumps and high fives with another squirrel.
• The camera pans up to a night sky to show a constellation of a car, whose "windshield" is hit by a shooting star.
• The gecko is part of spokesperson auditions and while on his way to the audition, he runs into the Taco Bell chihuahua saying "Oh great, a talking gecko."
• While a ACME worker is seen working at her desk a man is seen going back and forth and then he falls in a trapdoor.

The GEICO Gecko

The company's ads sometimes focus on its reptilian mascot, The Gecko, an anthropomorphic Day Gecko created by The Martin Agency and most recently a CGI creature generated by Framestore CFC. The gecko first appeared in 1999 during the Screen Actors Guild strike that prevented the use of live actors.^[3] The original commercial features the Gecko, voiced by comedian Kelsey Grammer, pleading for people to stop calling him in error as he is a gecko not to be confused with GEICO. Later "wrong number" ads used Dave Kelly as the voice of the gecko. In the subsequent commercials with Jake Wood,^[4] (which portray him as a representative of the company), the gecko speaks with a Cockney accent, because it would be unexpected, according to Martin Agency's Steve Bassett. In current commercials the gecko's accent is more working-class, perhaps in an effort to further "humanize" him.^[5] "As computer animation got better and as we got to know the character better, we did a few things," says Steve Bassett, creative director at The Martin Agency. "We wanted to make him a little more guy-next-door. And he looks a lot more real than he's looked before."^[3]

Parodies

Another common theme is misdirection, in which the commercial appears to be about an unrelated product (or, in fact, may not even be a commercial), suddenly changing to become a plug for GEICO. The commercials use a variety of fictional characters such as Speed Racer, Mrs. Butterworth, Jed Clampett, and Bill Dutchess as well as real people such as Tony Little, Little Richard, Joan Rivers, Peter Frampton, Don LaFontaine, and James Lipton spoofing themselves. Other commercials relate to a hair loss doctor who has saved by switching to GEICO, a nature show about a fish, and a soap opera of a couple who are breaking up. Another set of GEICO ads involved a fictional reality show called "Tiny House" in which contestants were forced to live in a half-scale house.

An additional commercial theme is the promotion of fictional products. In 2006 parody ads featured such products as long distance phone service, tomato soda, fast-food, a reality TV show, dolls, and even poking fun at the Old Navy commercials - in all cases, the parody portion of the ad ends with "but it won't save you any money on car insurance." After the GEICO slogan is heard, the commercials end with "Why haven't you called GEICO?"

The parody pitch crossed over to the Caveman campaign (see below) in a recent 10-second spot that appears to be a talking heads news interview, but features the popular caveman.

"I've got good news"

In another ad campaign, a character would be breaking bad news to another (such as a baseball manager replacing a struggling pitcher with a reliever), but then offers helpfully, "I've got good news!", and then explains, "I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to GEICO!". That news, of course, is of no immediate use at all to the other character(s). Some of the ads were parodies and/or featured celebrities including, for example, Esteban. The exchange became parodied for a time while the ads were popular. One of the most watched "I've got good news" spots was a soap opera parody featuring television actor Sebastian Siegel.

Bland salesman

In another series of ads, a GEICO pitchman is played by actor Jerry Lambert in an extremely bland and understated way, parodying the stereotype of an insurance man, such as reading to some bored-looking kids, from a book of fairy tales about insurance. In one segment, he reads a supposed e-mail from a viewer saying it would be "da bomb", i.e. something good, if the Gecko would do a dance called "The Robot". Cut to the Gecko doing that dance smoothly and gracefully (to the tune of a not-for-public-sale melody called "Sweet World" by a group called "Omega Men",^[6] which was used in the arcade video game In the Groove 2) and then back to the insurance salesman attempting to do the same dance, seemingly more stiffly than an actual robot would. The newest commercial featuring the GEICO gecko depicts the Gecko receiving a business suit from the salesman, in order to present a more professional appearance, but he declines.

Blueprint commercials

GEICO also has several only blue-and-white ads, coined as "blueprint commercials", that focus on getting the point across that GEICO is "saving people money on more than just car insurance" (such as motorcycle, RV, boat, etc.), accompanied by the song "Gimme What I Want" by DCP Productions.

Celebrities

There are also GEICO ads that feature stories from GEICO customers about situations in which the company assisted them, but are narrated by celebrities such as Charo, Burt Bacharach, Little Richard, Don LaFontaine, Peter Graves, and Verne Troyer.

Other ads have included James Lipton, Michael Winslow, Charlie Daniels, R. Lee Ermey, Peter Frampton, Joan Rivers, The Pips and Mrs. Butterworth's talking syrup bottle.

In response to the ads, Seth Green and Matthew Senreich wrote a sketch using the character Jar Jar Binks in a parody of one of the celebrity ads for their second Robot Chicken Star Wars special.

Fox's sketch comedy series Mad TV also made a sketch parodying these advertisements using characatures of Elmo from Sesame Street and comedian Carlos Mencia.

Cavemen

A popular series of well-received advertisements uses cavemen as pitchmen. Also developed by the Martin Agency, the ads center on Neanderthal-like cavemen, no different from modern-day individuals (outside of the somewhat pre-historic facial features), encountering either an ad or commercial with the tagline "GEICO: so easy a caveman could do it," followed by their disgust with the supposed stereotype of caveman stupidity. The ads posit a world where cavemen are still alive and active members of society in the present day, behaving and living nothing at all like the stereotypical caveman. The main characters presented in the ads are affluent, educated, and cultured, eating at fancy restaurants, going to exclusive parties, and seeing their therapists (portrayed in the commercials by two-time Oscar-nominated actress Talia Shire). The humor revolves around the relative normality of the cavemen's presence and their reactions to the stereotype represented in the ads, and their attempts at defending themselves from the stereotype.

The ads were so successful that the commercial actors are appearing in a successful series of interactive websites written and produced by GEICO's in-house creative team at Caveman's Crib and most recently, iHeartcavemen. A spin off TV series, titled Cavemen and starring new actors, debuted on ABC in October 2007^[7] to overwhelmingly negative critical reaction. It was canceled after only six episodes were aired.

My Great Rides

In 2007, GEICO also launched a social networking site, My Great Rides, for motorcycle owners. My Great Rides is a place for cycle owners to share stories about trips they have taken on their bikes, as well as post pictures of their motorcycles, and comment on other members' stories and pictures.

GEICO Racing

The number 7 car of the NASCAR Nationwide Series is driven by Mike Wallace and was sponsored by GEICO prior to 2009.^[8][9] Commercials involving the race team are of a memorably disdainful young boy, played by actor Eddie Heffernan claiming to be a relative of Mike Wallace and being a better driver.^[10] The boy says, "When people see Mike Wallace and the GEICO number 7 doing well, they'll think of saving a bunch of money on car insurance. But when they see me, they'll say, 'There goes Lauren Wallace; the greatest thing to ever climb into a race car.'"^[11]

The commercials are sometimes presented in an interview fashion, where an unseen narrator speaks to the ambitious go-kart driver. "What do you think of Mike Wallace?" the child is asked, to which he responds, "Whatever, he's out there selling car insurance, I'm out there to win." When questioned on his relation to the NASCAR driver, Lauren shakes his head and concludes, "I didn't say I wouldn't go fishing with the man, all I'm saying is if he comes near me, I'll put him in the wall." To which the narrator questions him, "You don't race in the Busch Series." Lauren replies "Listen, go-kart track, grocery store, those remote controlled boats; when it comes to Mike Wallace the story ends with me putting him in the wall."

New ads in this lineup include Lauren referring to himself as being, "100 miles away and ready to strike," and "lightning in a bottle."

The success of those ads resulted in the launch of an interactive website written and produced by GEICO's in-house creative team at GEICO Garage. The site includes cameo appearances by Lauren Wallace and drivers Mike Wallace, his daughter Chrissy Wallace, Speed TV's Tommy Kendall, Paul Tracy, Christian Fittipaldi and Max Papis.

15 Minutes Online

Reminiscent of the old "Stupid Things" commercials, these show videos of people doing stupid things, such as running in hallways with pillows, done YouTube style.

TRS: The Real Scoop

Introduced in September, 2007, this series of ads features an E! True Hollywood Story-type show about famed fictional characters such as Fred Flintstone, Jed Clampett, and even a Cabbage Patch Kid named Ben Winkler claiming to have their cars (the Flintmobile, Jed's 1923 Oldsmobile truck, and a Plymouth Reliant, respectively) insured by GEICO, featuring interviews with made-up investigators (however, the Ben Winkler spot does not have an interview). These commercials were voiced over by narrator David O'Brien.

The money you could be saving

In 2008, GEICO began airing a series of television ads featuring "the money you could be saving", in the form of two paper-banded stacks of U.S. bills with a pair of Googly eyes on top. In some commercials, someone discovers this character sitting nearby, and in others it simply stares at the camera while a voice-over talks about how it wants you to save money. These ads includes a remix^[12] by Mysto & Pizzi of the 1980s song "Somebody's Watching Me". During the Halloween 2009 season, GEICO tied in with HBO's True Blood series on bus bench ads and dressed up Kash in fang dentures.^[13]

Talking inanimate objects

In 2009, GEICO began a series of commercials featuring talking inanimate objects doing damage to cars. So far, they have used a talking tree limb falling on a windshield and breaking it. The tree limb makes fun of the car right before a smaller limb falls on the hood.

The next one is a talking pothole with a thick southern belle accent causing a flat tire. The pothole somewhat apologizes then says she'll get her cell phone out and call a wrecker before realizing that she doesn't have one because she's a pothole.

Rhetorical Questions Campaign

Toward the end of 2009, GEICO introduced another advertising campaign in which actor Mike McGlone walks into an empty room and queries the viewer, "Could switching to GEICO really save you 15 percent or more on car insurance?". After this, he pauses and then asks a rhetorical and/or obvious question which is immediately followed by a scene cut to the subject at hand.

Such questions have included (in no particular order):

Television ads

• "Is Ed 'Too Tall' Jones too tall?" (Cuts to Jones in a doctor's office being measured for his height, though he is too tall for the maximum length of the measure.)^[14]
• "Does Charlie Daniels play a mean fiddle?" (Cuts to Daniels energetically playing a fiddle in a classy restaurant after taking it from a violinist. Once he finishes, he hands it back and states "That's how you do it, son".)^[15]
• "Does Elmer Fudd have trouble with the letter R?" (Cuts to Elmer hunting and saying he is "hunting wabbits", the director correcting his rhotacism to the former's frustration, and eventually leaving while muttering about how "this diwector is starting to wub me the wong way".)
• "Did The Waltons take way too long to say good night?" (Cuts to the Walton family saying "good night" to each other numerous times.^[16][17])
• "Does a ten pound bag of flour make a really big biscuit?" (Cuts to a child buttering an enormous biscuit on the kitchen counter as his mom walks in with a dismayed look upon her face.)^[18]
• "Did the caveman invent fire?" (Cuts to the GEICO caveman sitting in a living room on a couch with a female companion. He looks disdainfully at the camera, then activates the fireplace by remote control before scowling at the camera once more.)^[19]
• "Was Abe Lincoln honest?" (Cuts to an old-style black and white film of Mary Todd Lincoln asking "Does this dress make my backside look big?" After a lengthy pause and deliberation, Lincoln sheepishly responds, saying "perhaps a...", interrupted as she gets up and walks out perturbed.)
• "Is having a snowball fight with pitching great Randy Johnson a bad idea?" (Cuts to Johnson helping a man to his feet, the latter with a hole in the arm of his jacket, in a snowy street. After lamenting the heavily damaged garage door behind them, they agree to go sledding instead.)
• "Is a bird in the hand worth two in the bush?" (Cuts to an Antiques Roadshow appraiser examining a small statue of a human hand holding a bird. He tells the statue's owner that it is, indeed, worth at least two in the bush.)
• "Can fútbol announcer Andrés Cantor make any sport exciting?" (Cuts to Cantor loudly and energetically calling a slow-paced chess match, yelling his trademark "¡GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!".)
• Announcer:"Does a former drill sergeant make a terrible counselor?" (Cuts to R. Lee Ermey talking to a man on a psychiatrist's couch, then abruptly yelling at him for crying and then throws a box of tissues at him,calling him a mean name.
• "Do woodchucks chuck wood?" (Cuts to a jovial pair of woodchucks throwing chopped logs into a pond and being admonished by the farmer who chopped them.)
• "Did the little piggy cry 'wee wee wee' all the way home?" (Cuts to a piggy (named Maxwell) riding in back seat of an SUV holding pinwheels, yelling "wee wee wee" out the window, before being dropped off at his house by his friend's disgusted-looking mother.)^[20]
• "Does it take two to tango?" (Cuts to a man and woman dancing the tango, while another man tries to dance with them.)
• "What, do you live under a rock?" (Cuts to a man living underground who moves a rock so he can raise his head above ground to see outside, and then gets excited when he sees a GEICO billboard and invites his friend Rick to move his own rock and take a peek.)
• "Does the buck stop here?" (The camera zooms out as a deer walks onto the soundstage and stops next to McGlone, who then shrugs his shoulders.)
• "Do dogs chase cats?" (Cuts to a dog and cat engaged in a Bullitt-style car chase.)
• "Is the pen mightier than the sword?" (Cuts to a ninja menacingly demonstrating his swordsmanship to his opponent, who countermaneuvers by using a pen to sign for the delivery of his new taser, with which he promptly defeats the ninja.)^[21]
• "Would Foghorn Leghorn make a really bad book narrator?" (Cuts to a recording studio where Foghorn is reading "A Tale of Two Cities" -- his ad-libbing and talking over the director cause an exasperated Henery Hawk to get up from the control panel and whack him with a club.)^[22]
• “Do people use smartphones to do dumb things?” (Cuts to three office workers using very silly smartphone apps to help celebrate the end of the workweek.)^[23]

Radio ads

• "Does helium make an opera room less stuffy?" (Cuts to male opera singer singing in a deep voice, then inhaling helium, and continuing in a high-pitched voice.)
• "Do mimes make even less sense when you can't see them?" (Cuts to a narrator describing a mime pretending to be inside an invisible box.)
• "Is sneaking out of a boring meeting while wearing tap shoes a bad idea?" (Cuts to a boring meeting with tap shoes in the background, until the boss catches on.)
• "Does a rolling stone gather no moss?" (Cuts to the sound of a boulder rolling through various things until it crashes to a stop, with McGlone then saying, "No moss -- you're gonna have to trust me on this one.")
• "Do only dogs hear dog whistles?" (Cuts to the sound of someone breathing in, then blowing in a dog whistle a few times, before being interrupted by several barking dogs.)
• "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise?" (Cuts to the sound of a tree falling and crashing, with McGlone then saying, "Yep.")
• "Is texting getting way out of hand?" (McGlone then begins to elaborate, but is interrupted and distracted by several incoming texts, ultimately responding to one message with "LOL, UR my BFF.")

Short Stories and Tall Tales

Starting in 2010, there have been TV commercials in which a nursery rhyme, being read to the audience from an illustrated book entitled Short Stories and Tall Tales, turns into an ad for GEICO homeowner's insurance:

• In one, the cow who jumped over the moon crashes down through someone's roof; luckily, the owner was insured with GEICO.
• In another, the Itsy Bitsy Spider's home is flooded as a result of a clogged downspout, and his mattress is ruined; thanks to GEICO, he now has a "Sleep Number" bed. His sleep number is 25.
• A burglar breaks into Little Miss Muffet's house and steals her tuffets, which were fortunately insured. The burglar was later caught, given away by a whey stain.

Xtranormal

Near the end of 2010, a new advertising campaign began made up of amateurish computer animated advertisements, supposedly made in 15 minutes, created with the computer software program Xtranormal.^[24]

Easier Way to Save

Starting in the summer of 2011, a new series of advertising involved people discovering unusual ways to save money.

Television commercials

• A couple teaching their 5 year old son how to dunk a basketball.
• A dog and a cockatoo playing a-ha's Take On Me.
• A sea captain living as a roommate, rehearsing Major-General's Song.
• A woman turning her daughter's pet fish into her husband's meal.
• Robots hired in a daycare center.
• Three guinea pigs rowing their boat to produce electricity for their owner's computer.

Radio commercials

• A guy who tries to cut his wife's hair, while she sleeps, instead of going to the hairstylist.
• A liar who can only rely on toll-free numbers.
• A man consolidating his five daughters' weddings into one day.
• A woman carpooling with her daughter's school bus.
• An umpire who can't pay for his contacts, using the lost pair of eyeglasses he found.

References