Is it the money GEICO wasted?

Well, the first rule of advertising is to get people to notice you.*
GEICO now has a new campaign that has a silent stack of five dollar bills with bug-eyes on it starting at people. The general premise is that it’s the money that you could be saving by switching to GEICO.

Interesting concept. Original even.

Effective? That is yet to be seen.

Silly? Fairly certain.

Stupid? Open to debate.

The Martin agency has been handling the GEICO account for some time now. [Cavemen, the Gecko Lizard, ‘Real People , etc.] I have no doubt that they are still the agency of record. While I am fairly certain that they have large dollar figures on the books and the ability to say that deep pockets like GEICO keep coming back to them is a major selling point when wooing new clients, I have to just wonder.
Wonder how a giggling woman in a restaurant with a seemingly out-of-touch husband being taken care of by a Chinese waiter while this stack of money stares at them works. The meeting with the ‘stack’ on a window cleaning rig outside? The ‘stack’ sitting on a white shoot set with voice-over, at times will ultra close-ups of the ‘stack’.

Maybe we should all stop trying so hard.


*Many will argue that it is something else, but as a general rule, that is what advertising is.