Sunday, February 8, 2009

Geico Needs to Burn in Hell

And not for the horrible Caveman ads. They've been beaten into the ground and haven't been close to funny in three years. But they aren't as bad as their new ones.

Geico has a new ad campaign that features a stack of money with googly eyes meant to represent the money you should be saving with their services. They then play Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me". It's just awful. I mean it is insultingly awful. Look, I understand that advertising pays for the free TV I watch on a daily basis. But it seems to me that if I was shelling out millions of dollars on advertising that I would want to avoid pissing off my potential customers.

Listen Geico, in addition to this asinine commercial, you also have the appalling caveman crap and the talking lizard. You can't have three different, unassociated ad campaigns going at the same time, especially when two of those three are terrible! You can't! It's against the rules. I will grant you that the talking lizard is kind of cute. Throw an English on any kind of animated, talking animal and you've got me hooked. Especially a monkey. Nothing is more entertaining than an English accented talking monkey. But this only serves to illustrate just how low my standard of entertainment is. Talking monkey. That's all you need to amuse me. But you fail to meet even this minimal threshold with your crappy caveman bullshit and the googly eyed wad of cash. Damn it!

The thing that irritates me about this is the pure laziness of it all. Was there really a marketing meeting in the corporate offices at Geico when some black framed glasses wearing, soul patch having, tight sweater wearing advertising douchebag revealed the long anticipated campaign of googly eyed money and the company president shouted, "Brilliant!"? I some how doubt that ever happened. I would imagine any sensible person in this imaginary meeting would have asked, "Why would the money follow them around and look at them? If the money has eyes, wouldn't it need feet as well? Really, what is the point of this crap? Is this the best you could come up with? Honestly it's more confusing and irritating than clever and entertaining. How much are we paying you to throw this garbage together?"

But the answer to any of these concerns is the following: "It doesn't matter. As long as we buy up tons of ad space and have something that is memorable, than we get our name out there and that's all that matters." And therein lies the problem. Their objective isn't to entertain their audience. It is to annoy them. They are actively trying to piss me off. I may hate the commercial, but at least I remembered it. And my ranting and raving only plays into their game, which only pisses me off more.

But you know what Geico? Go to hell. Go to hell for taking the cheap way out. Go to hell for insulting and antagonizing me. You want to antagonize me? Antagonize me, mother f*cker! Get in the ring mother f*cker and I'll kick your bitchy little ass. PUNK! (GNR Rules.) Go to hell for manipulating me into hating you just so I would recognize your brand. And most of all, go to hell for failing to entertain me. There is a reason I tune in to NBA basketball, Lost, 24 and other shows yous sponsor and it isn't to consider which auto insurance to buy. So if you want there to be a part of my brain that thinks fondly of your service when I do make that decision, you should try your best to please me during your very expensive prime time exposure. Dance, monkey! Dance!

Also, I have heard from many people that your coverage totally sucks. So you can go to hell for that too.

Update: I just thought of another separate ad campaign they have out. The ones where the celebrities explain customer's experiences with crappy Geico. These are actually pretty funny. Which makes the googly eyed money stack that much more inexcusable. Damn it Geico, you know how to entertain me, but you defiantly refuse to. Seriously, go to hell.

4 comments:

Ryan Kiel said...

can i give an AMEN!? the googley eyes on top of the money commercial is probably the most retarted piece of advertising propaganda i have ever had the displeasure of enduring.. the cavemen amuse me, the gecko.. eh.. but the googley eyes.. puhlease.. thank you brian for exposing this terrible piece of marketing as the asinine garbage that it is!

Gregg said...

Googly eyes on plants are hilarious, but this is a dumb campaign. Like you said though, Little Richard shouting "Mashed potatoes, gravy! Whoooohhhhoooo" makes almost anything they do excusable. For the record, this is the greatest comercial in the history of planet earth; aired ONCE durring a super bowl. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnQMq5wtZcg

Scoosba said...

How many times did you say the googly eyes were meant to represent the money you should be saving with geico?

Although I am disturbed when the movie commercial voice guy says the stack of cash "is peering deep into your soul, and knows you like to save money" I Unfourtunately think, "yes, I do like to save money" Then, "Damnit! Who's the ad wizard that came up with that?"

Ramsey said...

I'm with you on the monkey thing. In fact, I'm looking to involve more monkey's in every aspect of my life. I'm hoping eventually the entire profession of dental assisting will be taken over by monkeys with lipstick on.