Commercials and advertisements are necessary parts of our enjoyment of entertainment and our consumption of news. Without ads, what we pay for those things would be much more expensive.
I accept that, but I wish those who create commercials were held to a higher standard. Take the Geico insurance ads. Please! Take them somewhere so I don’t have to watch them again. I have no idea how good Geico coverage is, because I wouldn’t do business with a company that pays an advertising agency to create messages that are so ridiculous.
There have been a lot of stupid ads throughout the history of television. Think of the V-8 ads in which someone, real or animated, slaps himself or someone else in the head when he realizes he could have had a V-8 instead of some other drink. The worst of those was when the baby hits his mother when she hands him a bottle. I don’t have to worry about supporting that company because I don’t like vegetable juice.
Geico tops V-8 when it comes to being ridiculous. If I were to compile a list of the 10 dumbest TV ads, Geico might have all 10 spots. At least nine.
I understand that the idea is to get you to remember them. Perhaps they have succeeded with that. But they are so ridiculous, that I would never use their product. Whatever they pay for those foolish ads could be applied to reducing the cost for coverage.
Recently they added insult to annoyance by launching a new ad asking people to vote for their favorite Geico commercial. Seriously?
Geico’s basic message, “Fifteen minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance,” is a compelling point. And while I don’t like the animated Geico gecko, it is better than Aflac’s duck or the new Liberty emu. Geico carried its message to a silly extreme, and some of those other companies followed along like lemmings. Maybe that should be the next mascot.
Among Geico’s least offensive ads are “Insurance so simple even a cave man can do it” and the talking camel quizzing office workers to see if they know it’s hump day.
I picture a bunch of young ad agency people sitting around competing to see who can come up with the silliest idea, which results in well drillers who hit the mother lode of ice cream, a couple talking to a lobster hiding in a hot tub, Maxwell the pig riding in a car and crying “wee wee wee” all the way home, a talking pot hole, two squirrels who conspire to cause an accident. a barbershop quartet playing basketball, a hypnotist conning people into doing work around his house and a message that the Great Wall of China wasn’t always so great.
There must be hundreds of them, which means Geico spends an enormous amount of money to create and air them.
When I started driving at 16, I was insured by Erie, because that’s the company my parents used. Now, more than 50 years later, I’m still with Erie, mainly because the company provides good coverage at a fair price. The best part is, I haven’t seen the company waste money on silly ads that I would be helping to fund.
In fact, I had to Google “Erie Insurance Commercials” to find one. What I found, from late last year, was this message: “You don't need funny commercials to sell insurance. You just need really good insurance. Find your Erie Insurance agent today!”
The commercial has a man (and you don’t see his face) showing a series of papers with a simple message:
“This isn’t funny
“unlike other insurance commercials.
“They spend millions to make you laugh.
“But if you need seriously good insurance ...
“for your car …
“your home …
“your business …
“your life …
“This could be
“Your favorite commercial EVER
“Erie Insurance
“Seriously good insurance”
You can watch the commercial here:
That works for me. Seriously.
There have been some great commercials during the history of television, such as Coca-Cola’s Mean Joe Greene from 1979, Life cereal’s Mikey from 1971, McDonald’s basketball showdown between Larry Bird and Michael Jordan in 1993 and the Budweiser Clydesdales at Christmas in the 1980s and talking frogs in 1995.
There are thousands more.
For some people, TV commercials provide time to grab a snack or use the bathroom during a show or game. Except during the Super Bowl, when the commercials get almost as much attention as the game does.
The least these ad agencies could do is make the commercials intelligent and classy. I really appreciate commercials that are clever or interesting or entertaining, but too many of them leave me shaking my head in disbelief that a company would pay money for such silly ways to share its message.
For me, some of those ads simply don’t add up.
Wow, you really hit the nail on the head. I love Erie also. They were great to us when both cars were totaled in the hailstorm 5 years ago this month.
ReplyDeleteHi Harry,
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed your article.So true.
My entire career was in advertising. And always at ad agencies, therefore I created advertising on a variety of accounts - consumer, industrial, pharmaceutical, business to business, etc. I loved what I did. Started as an art director, eventually becoming a creative director, in Philadelphia. TV commercials I helped create were for Tastykakes, Abbotts Dairies (GRABANABBOTS!), Rustler Steakhouse, Hersheypark, WMMR Radio, Gino's, and Philadelphia National Bank.
There were no computers when I started in the business. Art directors and copywriters worked in teams to come up with creative selling ideas that fit a realistic objective. We studied the FEATURES and BENEFITS of the product or service we were marketing, looked at the competition, and THEN decided on an approach.
Today, it seems, an idea has merit if it’s funny. Or if it makes fun of the competition. Or has beautiful vibrography, or animation techniques. I guess that’s what social media has done to the new consumer. Made them look for “shine”, not substance. No facts about why the product is better. No insight as to why a consumer should try the product. It’s all, mostly, hype and glitz. Or, on sale,
I could not work in todays’ ad agencies. I would be judged as too logical. I would actually (try) to make sense to the consumer to have them try the product I was advertising.Sadly, my ideas would not get past today’s creative directors.
Many times, while watching TV, my wife and I will look at each other quizzically, and I’ll say, “We’re not the target audience for that commercial”. Thankfully.
Alan Kline, Pottstown
And yo think there is an advertising company getting paid a fee to develop the Geico drivel. Mad Men indeed !
ReplyDeleteI had to laugh at your comments. I don't think I ever stopped to think about how ridiculous those commercials are. The dumbing down of America at its best.
ReplyDeleteHa Ha. Almost as annoying as sticker ads covering headlines on front page of the Eagle.
ReplyDelete