Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Even When You When You Can Skip Them, Geico's Unskippable Ads are Still Unskippable.

You're about to show your friend the best cat video ever to reach the internet and, oh wait, you're forced to watch yet another Geico Insurance ad. Those five seconds of listening to some gibberish about 15% feel like forever as your itching to click the 'Skip' button until you realize that the ad you're watching is not your typical commercial.


Geico brilliantly engineered a way to make their ads 'unskippable' which, in this case, means that the ads are so surprisingly intriguing (and weird) that the viewer feels that they have to watch the whole ad. Though five seconds isn't much time to get your point across, but since Geico has been so effective with it's branding they only need to emphasize one important word that is the root of all their advertising efforts - 'savings'.  Just as your about to skip the ad, the announcer informs you that you can't because it's already over. What? Shocked, you look up and see that the ad is over, sort of. The characters remain still as life continues around them.



Such a situation is so strange and unnatural that it actually become hilarious which is perfect for all those YouTube visitors who are simply there looking for a laugh anyways. Not only are these ads successful in getting their viewers to watch the whole advertisement, they are truly memorable because they are unlike any other commercial. Before you known it those cat videos will lose their intrigue and you'll be skipping other commercials just to show off this one. 

2 comments:

  1. These commercials are absolutely hilarious. The dog one had me cracking up! It was such a smart move, to entice the viewers to watch the rest of the commercial by announcing that the commercial was over. It's kind of a "wait, what?" moment.

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  2. This is a really great idea for brands who do advertisements on YouTube videos. I can count on one hand the number of ads I've actually watched without skipping, so this is definitely an area where advertisers should be creative! Whether they're using their creativity to come up with an interesting message or utilizing interesting execution, this is just a great idea all around and more brands should try something like this.

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