Is the Martin Agency (GEICO’s ad agency) nuts? I think so. They created arguably one of the most memorable franchises in recent advertising history — the GEICO gecko — and now they’re using the critter to ridicule GEICO itself. I’m referring of course to the new round of ads that pits the “clever creature” against a fictional GEICO executive. We see bad idea after bad idea come from the hapless exec — from falling on the gecko “to show trust” to creating miniature 3-piece suits. Really makes me confident in GEICO as a company.<\/p>\n
While the approach probably tests well with 20-somethings and gets written off internally as “cheeky”, I think making your own management look stupid is just flat out bad strategy. In the current environment, people already have a profound mistrust of insurance and financial companies. Does making your green gecko spokesperson look smarter than your executive team help?<\/p>\n
Some may say, what about Jack in the Box’s commercials? Jack is often surrounded by corporate idiots isn’t he? The difference, and I think it’s a big one, is that Jack represents the CEO spot as hip, smart and in-charge. It’s still snarky and still pokes fun at the company but in a much less brand destructive manner.<\/p>\n
Call me old school. While this new direction for the gecko may be fun and games for the agency, I think it’s bad for business in the long run. There are better targets than your own upper management.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is the Martin Agency (GEICO’s ad agency) nuts? I think so. They created arguably one of the most memorable franchises in recent advertising history — the GEICO gecko — and now they’re using the critter to ridicule GEICO itself. I’m referring of course to the new round of ads that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_rsvp_to":"","_rsvp_max":"","_rsvp_show_attendees":"","_rsvp_instructions":"","simple_price":"","simple_price_label":"Tickets","venue":"","_template_start_hour":"","_template_start_minutes":"","_sked_minutes":"","_sked_stop":"","_sked_duration":"","_payment_gateway":"Cash or Custom","_rsvp_currency":"USD","_sked_hour":"12","_sked_end":"13:00","rsvp_tx_template":0,"_rsvp_start":0,"_rsvp_deadline":0,"_rsvp_deadline_daysbefore":"0","_rsvp_deadline_hours":"0","_rsvp_reg_daysbefore":"0","_rsvp_reg_hours":"0","_rsvp_count_party":"1","_timezone":"America\/Los_Angeles","_rsvp_on":false,"_add_timezone":false,"_convert_timezone":false,"_calendar_icons":true,"_rsvp_end_display":false,"_rsvp_rsvpmaker_send_confirmation_email":false,"_rsvp_confirmation_after_payment":false,"_rsvp_confirmation_include_event":false,"_rsvp_count":true,"_rsvp_yesno":true,"_rsvp_captcha":false,"_rsvp_login_required":false,"_rsvp_form_show_date":false,"_show_rsvpmaker_options":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[33,32,31],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing","tag-advertising","tag-gecko","tag-geico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geldner.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geldner.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geldner.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geldner.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geldner.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/geldner.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geldner.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geldner.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geldner.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geldner.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}