Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

I think a large part of the gecko's success traces to the fact that the advertising itself is good advertising. If you look at the characteristics of a good ad, the Geico advertising hits just about all of them. And it does it in a way that provides strong name recognition and a mnemonic hook -- association with an easily recognized character with an unusual name that is similar to that of the brand.

Beyond that, I think the personality of the character is well communicated and consistent, so people don't get bored or turned off by too much exposure. They must have 5 or 6 commercials in the pool ... not much wear-out.

Contrast that to Maria Sharapova's cute dog who makes the camera commercial memorable (along with Maria, of course), but you have to work hard to remember the brand ... because it's not a Maria, a Sharapova, or a dog.

(It's Canon, isn't it?)

The gecko provides entertaining interaction and is the mascot of the company. A character (such as the gecko) is sometimes more convincing than a sales presenter because of psychological reason. Humans are hurt and lied to by other humans before but how can an animated character posses such traits (we only blame the person who is using the character, not the character itself)? Humans look at sales presenter much more differently than an animated character. By creating a cute and loveable animated character to do the sales pitch, sometimes they can be more convincing than humans (also no actors fee, strengthens your brand, no replacements, doesn't age).

A good part of Geico's success is their commercials. All of Geico's commercials have light humor to it with the last 5 sec with the same selling pitch "15 mins can save you 15% percent or more on car insurance" (for retention rate). There's always a batch of ads (each year) to keep the consumers from watching the same old ads to make it easier to consume the commercials. Recently they have started making their ads not look like an ad until the very last 8-10 secs with their selling pitch. This is a really good approach since most viewers will switch to a different channel if they see a commercial so why not make it entertaining 3/4 of the commercial and the last part the "selling pitch" to have more consumers watch it till the end.