The Geico commercial below was posted over a year ago and was heavily featured during the 2011 football season. It's definitely awful for a variety of reasons that we'll get into in just a moment, but what's grinding my gears is that it's STILL in heavy rotation across sports programming. I mean most advertising for large companies have a shelf life of well under a year. Given Geico has geckos, cavemen, and some dude who looks like Pitt's basketball coach, I'm racking my brain as to why this cat turd is still being jammed down my throat.
Where to start. How about the fact that Orakpo is the spokesperson and he's not a top tier NFL player. Single digit sacks on losing team, yeah that's going to push product.
It's because of his limited name recognition that we get the awkward name dropping of "You are Brian Orakpo, All Pro Linebacker", which is clearly said because most viewers wouldn't recognize Orakpo.
If Geico was an official NFL sponsor they could just have his jersey shown and I'm sure that would do the trick, but instead this odd dialogue detour. I mean how often in conversation do you say "You are _______." It's just not natural at all.
Then there is the fact you have a caveman in a cheerleading outfit which is supposed to be funny I guess but is kind of disturbing. The hook at the end doesn't do much for me either. On the youtube page for this commercial the most popular comment pokes fun of the commercial and the slogan by saying, "You know what else is embarrassing? This commercial to your company."
Any major company who spends 9 figures a year on advertising is going to have their share of bad commercials. What's befuddling is not refreshing the creative with something else opposed to doubling down on something so annoying.
