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15 Advertising and Public Relations

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After an analysis of overall integrated marketing communications (IMC) planning, we dig more deeply into the specific marketing communication tools. In this chapter, we explore advertising and public relations (PR). Advertising involves communicating the company’s or brand’s value proposition by using paid media to inform, persuade, and remind consumers. PR involves building good relations with various company publics—from consumers and the general public to the media, investor, donor, and government publics. As with all the promotion mix tools, advertising and PR must be blended into the overall IMC program. In Chapters 16 and 17, we will discuss the remaining promotion mix tools: personal selling, sales promotion, and direct and digital marketing.

Let’s start by looking at an outstanding advertising campaign. Two decades ago, GEICO was a little-known nicher in the U.S. auto-insurance industry. But now, thanks in large part to an industry-changing, big-budget advertising program featuring an enduring tagline and a likeable but unlikely spokes-lizard, GEICO has muscled its way to the number-two position in its ultra-competitive industry. The message: Good advertising really does matter. Here’s the story.

GEICO: From Bit Player to Behemoth through Good Advertising

Founded in 1936, GEICO initially targeted a select customer group of government employees and noncommissioned military officers with exceptional driving records. Unlike its competitors, GEICO had no agents. Instead, the auto insurer marketed directly to customers, keeping its costs low and passing on the savings in the form of lower premiums. For nearly 60 years, GEICO’s marketing relied almost entirely on direct mail and telephone advertising.

In 1994, however, when GEICO decided to expand its customer base, it knew that it must also expand its marketing. So it entered the world of mass media, a shift that would dramatically change the face of insurance advertising. GEICO started slowly, spending a paltry $10 million to launch its first national TV, radio, and print ads. Then, in 1996, billionaire investor Warren Buffett bought the company and famously told the marketing group “money is no object” when it comes to growing the business, so “speed things up.” Did it ever. Over the next 10 years, GEICO’s ad spending jumped 50-fold, to more than $500 million a year.

By now, you know a lot about GEICO and its smooth-talking gecko. But at the start, the insurer faced a tough task—introducing a little-known brand with a funny name to a national audience. Like all good advertising, the GEICO campaign began with a simple but compelling theme, one that highlights the convenience and savings advantages of GEICO’s direct-to-customers system. To this day, every single one of the hundreds of ads and other content pieces in the GEICO campaign has driven home the now-familiar pitch: “15 minutes could save you 15 percent or more on car insurance.”

But what really set GEICO’s advertising apart was the inspired way the company chose to bring its value proposition to life. At the time, competitors were using serious and sentimental pitches—“You’re in good hands with Allstate” or “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.” To make its advertising stand out, GEICO decided to deliver its punch line with humor. The creative approach worked, and sales began to climb.

In trying to grow the brand, it become apparent that customers had difficulty pronouncing the GEICO name (which stands for Government Employees Insurance Company). Too often, GEICO became “gecko.” Enter the charismatic green lizard. In 1999, GEICO ran a 15-second spot in which the now-famous, British-accented gecko calls a press conference and pleads: “I am a gecko, not to be confused with GEICO, which could save you hundreds on car insurance. So stop calling me.” The ad was supposed to be a one-time “throwaway,” but consumers quickly flooded the company with calls and letters begging to see more of the gecko. The rest, as they say, is history.

Although the gecko remains GEICO’s iconic spokesman, one lizard could take the company only so far. So over the years, to keep its pitch fresh and entertaining, GEICO has supplemented the gecko ads with a continuous flow of clever, buzzworthy new executions telling the brand’s value story. Early on, when GEICO first went online, the campaign employed a clutch of cultured cavemen, insulted by the company’s advertising slogan “It’s so easy to use GEICO.com, even a caveman could do it.” Later, in response to the question “Can switching to GEICO really save you 15 percent or more on car insurance?,” the “Rhetorical Questions” campaign responded, “Is Ed ‘Too Tall’ Jones too tall?,” “Was Abe Lincoln honest?,” and “Did the little piggy cry ‘wee wee wee’ all the way home?” That last ad introduced the world to Maxwell, the talking pig who went on to star in his own GEICO campaign, emphasizing GEICO’s growing digital, social, and mobile advances. The brand’s later “Happier than . . . ” campaign introduced yet another talking animal, the popular Caleb the Camel, who proclaimed that GEICO customers are “Happier than a camel on hump day.”

In its more recent “It’s what you do . . . ” installment of the campaign, GEICO found yet another way to underline its value proposition in an entertaining and memorable way. In one ad, an immature Peter Pan annoyingly disrupts a staid convention luncheon because when you’re Peter Pan, “you stay young forever. It’s what you do.” Another ad featured a mom who calls her son while he’s in the midst of a dramatic James Bond–style exploit to vent about his dad’s refusal to call exterminators to handle a backyard squirrel problem because if you’re a mom, “you always call at the worst possible time. It’s what you do.” Each ad in the series concluded: “If you want to save money on car insurance, you switch to GEICO. It’s what you do.”

GEICO’s award-winning “Unskippable” campaign offered hilarious online video ads that viewers simply couldn’t skip. Each video featured a seemingly boring, everyday scene, such as a family eating a spaghetti dinner. The ads opened with an unabashedly huge GEICO logo in the middle of the screen and the line, “You can’t skip this ad because it’s already over. Fifteen minutes could save you 15 percent or more on car insurance.” But that’s when the fun kicked in. For example, in the family dinner video, the family freezes while their dog leaps onto the table, methodically and comically scarfing up everyone’s spaghetti (you have to see the video to appreciate it—it’s truly unskippable). The “Unskippable” campaign won the Film Grand Prix award at the Cannes international ad festival and received Advertising Age’s first-ever Campaign of the Year award.

Image shows the text "GEICO" and a gecko lizard standing with its arms on the word. — For more than 20 years, GEICO’s advertising and charismatic gecko have creatively and relentlessly driven home the brand’s value proposition: “15 minutes could save you 15 percent or more on car insurance.”

All text and images are copy written with permission from GEICO.

“No matter how many GEICO ads you’ve seen over the years—and it’s a bunch—they never seem to grow stale,” observes one expert. The company’s chief marketing officer explains, “We’re trying to stay ever-present in the consumer’s mind but not bore them and have them just tune out yet another GEICO ad.” However, no matter how varied, each mini-campaign has a distinctly GEICO flavor, and every single ad closes strongly with the crucial “15 minutes could save you 15 percent” tagline.

GEICO continues to invest heavily in advertising and content marketing, outspending every other insurance company in measured media by a nearly two-to-one margin. Its annual advertising budget, now more than $1.1 billion, makes GEICO the third-most-advertised U.S. megabrand. However, the brand’s creative and relentless advertising messaging plus its heavy investment have paid big dividends. The once little-known GEICO brand now enjoys well over 90 percent awareness among insurance shoppers. And after years of double-digit market share gains, GEICO now occupies second place in the ultra-competitive U.S. car-insurance market.

Moreover, beyond spurring GEICO’s spectacular growth, the brand’s advertising has changed the way the entire insurance industry markets its products. In what was once a yawn-provoking category, competitors ranging from Allstate (with “Mayhem”) to Progressive (with “Flo”) are now injecting humor and interest in their own advertising campaigns. “This strategy is absolutely working for GEICO,” asserts one analyst. It’s “a testament to how GEICO has used advertising to evolve from a bit player to a behemoth,” says another.1

Objectives Outline

COMPANIESMUST DO MORE than simply create customer value. They must also engage target customers and clearly and persuasively communicate that value to them. In this chapter, we take a closer look at two marketing communications tools: advertising and public relations.

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