Geico's lizard seeks to reassure in new campaign

The Gecko and the Financial Wizard

The one thing Americans want and need the most right now is reassurance. That's what Geico tries to convey in a new series of TV spots featuring the lovable lizard and The Boss, who has some questionable ideas as to how to go about it. The print campaign, more serious in tone (well, sorta), invokes the name of Warren Buffett to show how stable Geico is.

EXCERPT from NY Times story:

In advertisements appearing in newspapers and magazines, the gecko wears horn-rimmed glasses. “Presenting a straightforward and serious talk about the nation’s third-largest car insurance company,” the headline on one print ad reads. “From a spokesman who’s not wearing any pants.”

That ad, about halfway down in the text, describes Geico as “a financially stable company that’s here for the long run” and “a wholly-owned subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.”

Click the link and see videos of a couple of the gecko TV spots. Reminds me of a campaign I proposed to a bank client over a period of two or three years, always unsuccessfully, can't think why. The ads would feature an iguana. He would become the Geico gecko of this bank. So the ads would say, "I guana get a checking account at (bank)." Or "I guana get an auto loan at (bank)." Or "I guana get a great CD rate at (bank)." The last time I mentioned it, the client got red in the face and told me, through clenched teeth, "Don't ever talk to me about iguanas again." No sense of humor.

That bank got bought by another bank, but I still think it might have been the other way around, if only the client had listened to my iguana idea.