Commercial Critique

Advertising is evil, no doubt about it. It can manipulate, control, brainwash, or just plain annoy. Be that as it may, I absolutely LOVE commercials. Good, bad, doesn’t matter, because they give me unlimited pleasure when it comes to dissecting them. Let’s get to it…

Auto Insurance. Not a very exciting thing to sell, so you’ve got to be creative. Let’s compare two spots from Progessive & Geico. I recently saw these two spots run within 5-10 minutes of each other on the same station and both of them blew me away. Progressive for it’s absolutely HORRIBLE script and Geico for it’s absolutely GENIUS vignette. Which one’s a better commercial? Unfortunately, the powers that be will argue they’re both good because I’m talking about them, but honestly Geico kicked Progressive’s ass.





I’ve never quite understood the universe that Progressive has built. There’s some ethereal, heaven-like store with sliding doors but no walls where people shop for insurance plans that are packaged in, presumably empty, boxes and “Flo,” the quirky sales associate helps people feel better about choosing Progressive and passing on to the unknown. Is everyone searching for insurance dead? Most of their spots seem apologetic, “we’re sorry you have to buy insurance, but since you do, please buy ours. By the way, here’s a not-too-whacky non-offensive sales associate to ease the pain of taking your money.”

The actress playing “Flo” is Stephanie Courtney and she does an excellent job of being not too whacky or offensive to anyone, yet still clever, but not too smart, but helpful and approachable, but not pushy. It was exactly what the client wanted and that’s just what an actor should do in a commercial, exactly what the client wants. It’s creatively stifling, but you gotta pay the bills, right? By the way, did I shoot myself in the foot writing this?

Unfortunately, the client doesn’t always know what they want so they go to an ad agency, and the ad agency comes back to the client with these AWESOME ideas that the client loves and has signed off on, and everyone’s excited about this groundbreaking campaign that’s going to get made. Then the ad agency writes a lot of brilliant spots, there’s casting sessions, crews are hired to shoot the spots, people are flown in from out of town and put up in hotels, equipment and costumes are rented or purchased (or both) and everyone’s ready to go only to have the client call up the ad agency the day before or day OF the shoot and request a “couple of minor changes” that totally castrate the commercials into what most people see as these annoying little time-fillers on your TV’s and computers.

This seems to have been what happened with Progressive’s campaign. Two guys… looking for insurance… one guy sold a watch, one guy bought a watch… Rates… bells ringing… What? No creativity or the creativity was stifled. I don’t know, it seems to be a whole lot of set up, but no punchline, no pay-off and I feel you need some sort of pay-off to make a commercial work.

That’s where Geico comes in. I have no idea what kind of client they are or even the ad agency that creates their spots. Geico seems to get it. They seem to be the type of client that can get out of the way of the ad agency and let them do what they do best – be creative. Some of the most memorable commercials were made against the corporate mentality of the client and what they feel would work and how they’re afraid of being perceived as too this or too that. Please, just let the ad agency be creative. “Where’s the beef?” Huge. According to the documentary Art & Copy by Doug Pray Wendy’s didn’t want it.

Geico’s Lincoln spot is one of the funniest spots I’ve seen in years, so much so I wanted to write about it. Again, I know nothing of how it got made, but creativity seemed allowed to flow. Everything works in this spot from the minimalist writing and direction, to the acting and special effects. It’s all so expertly done that you, most likely, don’t notice ANY of it and that’s just why it’s so excellent. But I have to say, the two actors in the spot are inspiring in their comic timing.

Now, which Auto Insurance would I buy based on these ads? Neither, I’m already covered by USAA, which is AWESOME! You really should try them out if you can.