Geico: From Gecko to Caveman to Strange

Geico has become famous over the  years with their slogan, "15 minutes or less could save you 15% or more on car insurance" and this slogan has not changed since the start of their advertisements. What has changed, however, is the content of these advertisements. Back in 1999, Geico aired its first television advertisement which involved the company's mascot, a gecko that has the ability to talk.

After solely using this mascot for a few years, Geico changed the direction of their television advertisements by using cavemen in their commercials in order to promote their new website rather than the gecko. They still kept the same 15 minutes slogan but added another one that also became popular, "So easy a caveman can do it".

For both the gecko and the cavemen, the main purpose was to get a comedic reaction from the audience. They launched a new campaign last year which would start off with a scene that would mention Geico in the first few seconds and then just stay still for the remainder of the commercial. I found this to be very creative, somewhat mocking the fact that the content of a minute long advertisement can be put across in about 2 seconds and the remainder of the advertisement is unskippable.

For the beginning of 2016, Geico began a campaign that was more strange than any of their previous, but it still kept that same, somewhat genius, creativity. In the commercial, two men are working out at a gym but one of them is talking about how much more he gets from Geico than he did from his previous insurance. The body of the man who did not switch stays the same throughout the commercial whereas the body of the man who did switch gradually gets stronger and stronger every time the camera is on him.

They mock the gym lifestyle of being a "bro" throughout the commercial by using the same face of a man during the commercial on top of a body that is clearly not his, but there is one problem I find with this approach. The whole point of the commercial is to compare how the one man is getting more from Geico as well as more from his workout than the other, but if you only see either the first or second half of this commercial you will not be able to make that comparison. Geico's advertisements continue to get stranger with each new one, but I am not against that, and I am looking forward to seeing what they come up with next.