Switching to Geico

Television has been used as a tool for advertising products ever since its earliest days of existence. People have come for the television shows expecting to be entertained, but have stayed for the commercials because, usually, there is bound to be something that appeals to their wants and needs. Sex appeal runs rampant in the advertisement industry. Scantily clad women dance about with chilled Fanta’s in their hands, telling, or rather singing to sweat-covered people that they must hurry and drink their soda or they will remain hot forever and will miss out on the wonderful party. If it isn’t sex that is being sold, then the commercials are tying to play on people’s insecurities and paranoia. Somehow they convince the potential buyer that without their product they will remain ugly, out of shape, sleep deprived and defenseless against being continuously robbed.

As of now, very few commercials attempt to take the viewer off guard by coming out of nowhere with something unrelated to what they are trying to sell, much like GEICO. Usually when one thinks of GEICO, a green Australian speaking gecko comes to mind, claiming that he cannot save you money on insurance, demanding that people stop calling. He then proceeds to lick his eye. This interesting commercial was just the beginning of a never-ending spiral into the strangeness that is GEICO.

There are other GEICO advertisements such as the caveman commercial. It starts out, simply enough, leading you to believe that the well-dressed man approaching you and claiming that switching to GEICO insurance is so easy that even a caveman can do it. Just when you think the commercial is over with, the camera pans to a caveman who angrily throws down the microphone he was holding and storms off the set, the well-dressed man following behind, apologizing profusely, claiming that he didn’t know. Somehow the offensive commercial makes it on air, and who happens to see this? Two well-dressed cavemen chilling in their lavishly furnished apartment. Both of the cavemen scoff and shake their heads while one remarks on how condescending the commercial was.

There’s a new reality show. Two people that are madly in love finally marry, and upon entering their new house, they discover that everything is uncomfortably small. They must stay in this house for a whole year. It starts out ‘awesome’ but ends up being ‘not awesome’ as the couple struggles day to day with sleeping and cooking. Loudly the male exclaims that he just wants to make and omelette. Just when you’re reeled in, thinking that this is in fact going to be quite an entertaining reality show, the voice over comes on and says: “15 minutes can save you 15% when you switch to GEICO.”

They