I Love Options

Hi everyone. I know it's been a while, but I hope the wait was worth it, because I'm finally getting around to presenting ... my insurance commercial spectacular! You knew it was coming, so let's get right into it.

First of all, God bless deregulation. Because so many states now allow auto insurance providers to compete on cost, we get to reap the bounty that is an unending barrage of surprisingly offbeat ad spots for various providers. The competition is so fierce that I even get to see the commercials here in my home state of Massachusetts, which doesn't allow competition on price (and in which many of these providers don't even operate). The only thing better than a good commercial is a good commercial for a product I can't buy. But since I don't own a car anyway, this point is moot.

So there are a lot of insurance companies out there and a lot of ads, but what's so interesting about that? The interesting thing occurred to me a few months back when I saw a spot for the company Amica, which was mostly unremarkable until the point where a character uttered the line, "I love options," which on its own made me giggle (sorry but I couldn't find video of this online). It made me think about what kinds of options were offered by the competition, which I only knew about through their commercials. And thinking about this made me realize that it's not just volume and quality that makes these insurance commercials interesting, it's variety. Yes indeed, there are options.

So let's take a look at what some of these companies have to offer. First up is Esurance, the maverick online-based insurance provider, whose creative work is done by the company itself in partnership with an animation studio called WILDBRAIN. According to their website, this gives them the benefit of "face to face" collaboration. Let's see an example of the result.



Seems that options are not the major selling point here. No, their approach is a little more basic. Fast-moving, eye-catching animation and emphasis simply on the "fast" and "easy" aspect of their service. Perfect for the net-savvy motorist who doesn't have a lot of time for insurance, what with all that time spent making money, fighting crime or, more likely, surfing the internet for porn.

Next we move on to Allstate. This campaign, brought to us by the Leo Burnett agency, is a little more, well, stately. This is largely thanks to the Presidential star power of Dennis Haysbert.



Decidedly not as fast, nor as easy, as the offerings from Esurance. But clearly this is advertising a different product. This is dependability, and service. This isn't for young bucks who drive fast and loose. This is your father's auto insurance.

Or is it?



So apparently even Allstate will turn up the heat if it needs to, even cracking a joke or two. Still, I doubt that the allusion to The French Connection is meant to resonate with the younger audience.

Let's raise the bar on complexity just a bit by checking in on our friends at Progressive Direct. Over the past few years their campaign has been erratic, at best. In 2006 they switched their creative contract to Boston-based Arnold Worldwide. Since then, for a while they had a campaign fronted by broadcaster and ESPN horse racing personality Kenny Mayne.



Kenny's not a bad spokesman, I suppose, but I don't have a good sense of what message he was trying to get across. I suppose Progressive's thing is that they help you to compare their rates and services with their competitors. I suppose that's an interesting point, but isn't that something we all could do on our own? Yes Kenny, I trust you despite your known penchant for playing exacta wheels, and the little cow is adorable, but are you really selling me anything?

A little later Progressive tried a different tact with this frequently aired spot starring Colleen Crabtree.



This one could go into a file for a recurring commercial theme - the depiction of a very collected, professional service employee politely dealing with a rather nutty client. I like it. But apparently, the people at Progressive or Arnold didn't think the theme was quite what they wanted. So they essentially reversed roles. Let's take a look.



The odd thing about this is not just the change in theme of the commercials, it's that the messages of the commercials seem to contradict those of previous commercials. The original campaign spoke to the discriminating consumer who wanted to get the best price and service. The next campaign, or at least the one commercial, spoke to the harried consumer who needed increased personalized service. This recent campaign presents their product as a retail offering with various associated deals and cost-savings, presumably targeting the customer who just wants to buy and not think about anything else. It's almost veering in the direction of Esurance. Why? Perhaps people didn't like options so much, after all.

And last but not least, we turn the undisputed king of insurance commercials. This is the granddaddy of them all, the brand that the Martin Agency has turned into a household name just on account of its commercials. The ways in which these campaigns have mined pop culture gold are practically too many to count. I would have to write a book just about it - and I wouldn't be surprised if someone already has. But just to pick a few examples, let's start with the catchphrase.



No analysis needed there. Something strange is going on, you're not sure what, and the message to the consumer comes packaged in the punch line: "I saved a bunch of money." Well, you got my interest. Tell me more.

Next, skipping briefly over the gecko, a pop culture phenomenon in itself, we go to this gem, which as far as I can tell is the only ad campaign that spawned its own (albeit short lived) television series.



There it is. Again we have what is practically a minisketch, like a high concept Laugh-In bit, built around a very simple message to the consumer: "easy". I suppose we could have a side discussion on why the television series Cavemen failed so miserably. I could go on about this, but to put it simply, I think it simply forgot what it was selling. Some people think of TV commercials as short, stylized TV shows, but how do we know that TV shows aren't just elongated, stylized TV commercials? Chew on that one.

Now we come to my favorite. It speaks for itself.



They ran a whole series of these starring such luminaries as Don LaFontaine, Peter Frampton, Peter Graves, Burt Bacharach, and James Lipton, and I encourage you to watch as many of them as you can stand. Overall we see the same things we did before: high concept, good comedy. But this time the message is different. This time it's about the service, and the peace of mind that customers receive when in the unfortunate position of having to file a claim.

By now you all surely see where I'm going with this. These different campaigns aren't just scattered musings and random jokes. Each of these campaigns was tailored to deliver a different, specific message about the product being sold. It didn't try to be all things to all people at once, instead it gradually built up its image over time. First it was the cheap insurance (actually, I didn't even go back to the proto-message of their early commercial campaign, "everyone does stupid things," which can be interpreted as you like). Then it was the easy insurance. Then it was the service-oriented insurance. Now, it is beyond pigeonholing. It transcends description. It is Geico.

Okay, maybe that's overly dramatic. But still, Geico continues to push the envelope of how far its image can go, as evidenced in this new spot that I recently saw. This marks the first instance I can think of in which a corporate mascot is enlisted to endorse a product that it was not created to endorse.



It's a bit of a mind-bender, and I still haven't made up my mind as to what it means. Perhaps it is just a random joke that someone thought up and ran with, though I tend to discount those theories as too boring to be true. Perhaps this is their attempt to ingrain the Geico brand even deeper into American culture by associating itself with other well-known advertising campaigns. Perhaps they think the American audience is savvy enough not to be threatened by the complications of a commercial within a commercial. I suppose to determine its real impact we'll have to see if they continue on that theme, or if other brands begin to follow suit. I would like it if they did.

Well that concludes my survey of insurance commercials. Drive safely everyone. Or even better, take the bus.