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."

The ads are effective at getting customers to switch to GEICO. Warren Buffet, 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 was 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 Celebrities 6 Cavemen 7 My Great Rides 8 GEICO Racing 9 15 Minutes Online 10 TRS: The Real Scoop 11 Kash 12 Talking Inanimate Objects

[edit] 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 small man walking 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 head.

[edit] Individual advertisements

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

• A duck, similar to the duck who appears in the Aflac commercials, 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 metal heat protection suit as he delivers a competing insurance company's bill because it is "too hot to handle".
• Another man's dog laughs hysterically at his owner's insurance bill.
• 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 hats 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 a man joyously jumping up and down over the money 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 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.
• A man drives a golf cart retrieving a golf ball he found in the river and when he goes to tee off, the ball ends up in the river again and he sets off to retrieve it, but ends up sinking in the river.
• A man watches TV and thinks he had eaten chips, only to find he had eaten dead leaves off a plant.

[edit] The GEICO gecko

The company's ads sometimes focus on its reptilian mascot, Martin 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] In the original commercial, where the gecko pleads for people to stop calling him in error, mistaking gecko for GEICO, he was thought to have been voiced by Kelsey Grammer. In the subsequent commercials, (which portray him as a representative of the company), the gecko speaks with an English (Cockney) accent, because it would be unexpected, according to Martin Agency's Steve Bassett. Jake Wood, a British actor and comedian, is the current voice of the GEICO gecko. In current commercials the gecko's accent is more working-class, perhaps in an effort to further "humanize" him.^[4] "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] A recent series of ads show a nature show host, clearly patterned on David Attenborough, attempting to observe the gecko and obtain footage, but failing to do so. "'E's giving me the 'eebie-jeebies," the lizard confides.

[edit] 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?" This use of fictional products in commercials is reminiscent of the Energizer Bunny campaign for batteries from the late 1980s.

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.

[edit] "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 offer helpfully, "I've got good news!", and then explain, "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.

[edit] 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 "the 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"^[5], 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.

[edit] 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 ("that announcer guy from the movies"), Peter Graves, and Verne Troyer. D.C. Douglas was also featured.^[6]

Other recent ads have included James Lipton, Police Academy's Michael Winslow ("that guy who does those funny sound effects"), 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.

[edit] 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 Criband 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] GEICO Racing

The number 7 car of the NASCAR Nationwide Series is driven by Mike Wallace and is sponsored by GEICO. 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. 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;^[8] the greatest thing to ever climb into a race car.'"

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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Kash

Starting in 2008, GEICO has been 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. This character is possibly similar to Fajo from Conker's Bad Fur Day^[9] and is known as "Kash". 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^[10]by Mysto & Pizzi of the 1980s song "Somebody's Watching Me".

[edit] 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 draw 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. Other recent one's include a talking car bumper and talking husband and wife pipes that have Russian accents.