Dean's World

The New Marketing

Dean

My lovely wife recently linked this hilarious GEICO commercial.

She actually voluntarily, and spontaneously, for no compensation, put up a GEICO ad on her site. Why?

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: the new pact between advertisers and the audience is that if you entertain us, we will reward you with our support.

Well I guess that's not new. But this part is:

Entertain us, and we'll give you free advertising. Sort of like The Snickers "Happy Peanuts" Song.

The most effective ads of the early 21st century will be ads that are witty, intelligent, engaging, and maybe even a little subversive.

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Martin L. Shoemaker (www):

I wonder if someone might attempt (or already has attempted) Pay To View: "We'll pay you 1 cent per ad to watch our ads." You couldn't do this on TV, because you couldn't be sure people were really watching; but online, you could make the ad just interactive enough that someone has to do some small thing to verify they watched it. Have each ad have a hotspot that must be clicked, or something.

1.30.2007 10:40am

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John_B (mail) (www):

No, we'll be amused by an ad and may choose to reward the writers and producers of said ad by giving them free publicity (though we don't actually mention their names).

GEICO gets a little pat on the head for hiring a smart ad agency. But hiring ad agencies is not their line of business; selling insurance is their business.

I'll judge them by how well they do that, thank you very much. They don't do nearly as well as USAA, though they do a more thorough job of stuffing my mailbox with their print ads.

Yeah, the ads are cute (so is the gecko). Their ad department gets props for hiring good people and good agencies. I'll remember that next time I'm in need of an ad agency, not when it's time to renew my insurance.

1.30.2007 10:50am

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Dean Esmay:

John: It's called "building the brand." People know those are the GEICO caveman commercials. That's enough.

1.30.2007 12:14pm

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daniel (www):

The next step has to be to get the caveman and the gecko together on Oprah or Dr. Phil or maybe even O'Reilly to debate. Then, when the gecko makes a snide comment, the caveman clubs him or eats him in one bite.

1.30.2007 12:53pm

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John_B (mail) (www):

'Building the brand' isn't the same as 'building brand name recognition'.

But I'll be very amused if the two ad lines converge!

1.30.2007 1:08pm

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MaryJ:

I do get a kick out of those ads. Good for Rosemary ;-)

1.30.2007 4:09pm

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Linda Frazier (mail):

Caveman eats gecko. Snort again.

1.30.2007 11:34pm

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John_B (mail) (www):

How about gecko eats caveman?

1.31.2007 12:24am

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Sean Golden (mail) (www):

The tone of these ads is such that a caveman/gecko confrontation would more likely end up with the caveman slicing the gecko into tiny metaphorical pieces using a blade of pure sarcasm.

1.31.2007 11:11am

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