How Geico Became the One Advertiser It's OK to Love

What makes a Geico ad a Geico ad? The insurance brand has run an endless parade of humorous advertising over its 25-year relationship with The Martin Agency, and, creatively, the campaigns have been all over the map. Even more strangely, these disparate campaigns have often run in market at the same time, breaking a core commandment of marketing: Thou shalt not confuse thy customer. But the counterintuitive thread that binds them all has also been the brand's secret to not overstaying its welcome with the ad-watching public. The secret: Be funny, but not too funny. "It's a smart humor—a chuckle, not a knee slapper," Joe Pusateri, vp of marketing for Geico, tells Adweek. "We think knee-slappers wear out and get kind of irritating." With this guiding principle, Geico has managed to become the advertising equivalent of the friend everyone likes having around. Funny, but not obnoxiously so. The brand's dry wit comes through in even the most over-the-top campaigns, with its jokes never seeming low-brow nor New-Yorker-cartoon elitist. To mark the 25 years since it began its creative relationship with the Richmond, Virginia, based Martin Agency, Geico has been re-airing a collection of some of its greatest advertising hits recently, while also encouraging fans to vote for their favorites. The voting ended this week, and the fan favorite proved to be "Hump Day," the 2013 spot that became an immediate office catchphrase for any given Wednesday. [kickout id="10"] The Geico and Martin teams had long discussed the idea of revisiting their classic ads, many of which hold up remarkably well—including "Collect Call," a circa-2000 spot from the era of payphones: The 25th anniversary of the client-agency relationship provided a good excuse to wrangle together a "best of" collection, but to avoid the whole thing seeming too self-indulgent, Geico made sure to include both the voting and prize aspects. The idea of the winner appearing in a future ad stemmed from a wish frequently heard among Geico staffers. "People here within the Geico walls always say, 'I wish I could be in a Geico ad,'" Pusateri says. [kickout id="1"] Would most people get excited about the possibility of appearing in an ad? Probably not. But a Geico ad? That's something different. The reason why Geico ads have remained in a class of their own dates back to the earliest days of its ads, when the brand was an unknown, the category was a complete bore and the rules of truly modern advertising had yet to be written. [kickout id="2"] From upstart to icon In the mid 1990s, there was no Flo. There was no Mayhem. There was no JK. Simmons doing questionable research. Insurance was serious business with no time for nonsense. "Geico was a challenger brand back in 1994," says Steve Bassett, Martin Agency's group creative director overseeing the Geico account. "Car insurance was a very low-interest category. Not only do people not think about it, they don't want to think about it." Geico was also asking consumers to think of insurance in a completely new way. Instead of selling you on an agent who'd become your long-term insurance adviser, Geico was asking you to buy insurance as a commoditized product—meaning price and convenience were key. In its research on the account, Martin Agency found the perfect way to drive home this differentiator. "We did some research and found that in 15 minutes, you could save 15 percent or more," Bassett says. Yes, it would become one of advertising's great taglines, but it also set the stage for a new way of pitching insurance. "The tagline Gieco and Martin Agency built together was a very left-brain approach to insurance," Bassett says, "when most other insurance brands were using right-brain, emotional approaches." The client-agency team felt that most insurers were tacitly trying to scare their potential customers with messages of the worst-case scenarios that necessitate insurance. Instead, Geico would make them laugh. And instead of focusing on when you'll need insurance, Geico simply treated it as a monthly bill we all know we need to pay—so why not save a few bucks? [kickout id="3"] Growing together as brand and agency Geico's approach, along with its category-rattling spend on direct-to-consumer advertising, made it a rapidly growing juggernaut in the field and forced its competitors to shift course if they didn't want to get steamrolled into obsolescence. Meanwhile, Martin Agency also grew alongside its dream client, taking on a wide range of other accounts and winning some of advertising's highest global honors. "When Martin got Geico, we were more of a regional agency," Bassett says. "We hadn't done as much TV as some of the bigger agencies. Both Geico and the Martin Agency grew up together, developing a really strong broadcast portfolio." It's the kind of partnership most agencies will only ever dream of. But business success always remains at the core, and despite its creative experimentation, Martin Agency says it's held to account on every campaign it launches. "Geico is a very metrics-driven company. If this wasn't working, believe me, we wouldn't be doing it," Bassett says. "But Geico has been very brave and very patient. Not everything we've done has worked. They're willing to roll the dice in a smart way. They believe in the creativity, the belief that good creative and having a likable brand really makes a difference." [kickout id="4"] "We have a very open relationship with The Martin Agency," Pusateri says. "They know when we're doing great. They know when our results are not where we want them to be. We share a lot of information with the agency. There are a lot of very smart and brilliant people at the agency who will add in their perspective, and we also have our internal stakeholders." Settling on the greatest hits Once the brand and agency had decided to create a "best of" showdown, pitting their top ads against each other via public voting, they faced the difficult task of crafting a shortlist for consumers to pick from. These ads would also go back into rotation on the airwaves, a fact that helped raise the stakes. Geico created its list, and Martin Agency staffers worked on its own. Each came back with 20 semifinalists. "Those lists intersected a lot," Bassett says. That was good news, but it would still need to be pared back to a more manageable 10 finalists. Some campaigns had to go due to logistical reasons—namely the difficulty of re-securing rights to feature the talent. For that reason, those featuring customer testimonials were cut early. Regardless, this wouldn't be cheap or simple. In the end, The Martin Agency would put a "heroic effort" into renegotiating talent fees on spots that were, in some cases, decades old. "While there was definitely a financial consideration," Pusateri says, "there was also a consideration of whether we'd even be able to reach these people?" [kickout id="5"] A few house rules were agreed upon. Only one ad from each campaign would make the cut. Also, nothing more recent than five years old would be included, which meant digital mega-hits like "Unskippable" (which won Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions) wouldn't be in the mix. Keeping things interesting In the end, the process also served as a history lesson for many who work on the Geico account and helped distill the recurring themes that have made for the brand's best advertising. Bassett says Geico's biggest successes are largely thanks to the client's ongoing challenge to "bring stuff that surprises us and might even make us a little uncomfortable." That makes life both fun and challenging for the agency, but it also keeps those on the client side from ever settling into a rut. "This is the best job I've ever had," Pusateri says, "and that's because it's not the same every day." [kickout id="9"] The close partnership between Martin Agency and Geico was also key in another surprising aspect of the "Best Of" campaign: how quickly it came together. The idea came together in October and was on the air just two months later. "When two entities work as well together as we do," Pusateri says, "you can pull something like this off in what would normally take other brands much longer." In addition to the spots above, you can check out the rest of Geico's finalists below. For the record, Pusateri says his favorite is "Maxwell" (the pig going wee all the way home), the first spot he worked on directly when he moved into his marketing role. Martin Agency's Bassett, in fatherly form, says he could never pick a favorite: "I love them all." [kickout id="6"] [kickout id="7"] [kickout id="8"]