In the past three years, Geico has become one of the best-known names in the automobile insurance business—thanks largely to a talking lizard.
The CGI Geico gecko first scurried into public consciousness in July of 1999, when he declared, "I am a gecko, not Geico. Please stop calling me," in a spot entitled "Press Conference," directed by Jonathan David, now with bicoastal/international Morton Jankel Zander.
"It wasn’t meant to be a campaign," says Steve Bassett, senior VP/group creative director at The Martin Agency, Richmond, Va., which has had the Geico account since 1994. "But after the gecko was in that one spot, people started noticing him. He just caught on."
As more ads aired, in which the increasingly annoyed gecko reminded viewers that he could not save them money on car insurance, his notoriety grew. "Wherever I’d go, when I’d mention to people that I work on the Geico account, they’d say, ‘Geico, not gecko,’" Bassett shares.
Recently, however, the client and creatives decided it was time for a change of reptilian heart. "About six or seven months ago, we had a meeting with Ted Ward [Geico’s VP of marketing] and Pat Dubin [creative services director], and our creative team—[senior art director] Cody Spinadel and [VP/senior copywriter] Bob Meagher," Bassett recalls. "Our creatives said, ‘You know, it’s been a couple of years now that the gecko’s been telling people not to call him. It would be interesting if he were to finally say, ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,’ and start working for the company. The client liked the idea."
The creatives devised a series of spots, showing the gecko as a team player. In "Audition," he’s the only non-human at a Geico spokesman audition—until he runs into the out-of-work Taco Bell Chihuahua. "Hands," "Tail," "Employee of the Month," and "Food" depict Geico employees, expounding on their new, vermilion-skinned co-worker (who is shown driving to work and typing away on a computer.) In the Toy Story-esque "Action Figures," a gecko doll breaks up a fight between two ersatz space aliens in a sleeping boy’s room, regaling them with tales of the insurance company’s affordability. And "Meadow" features a romantic interlude between the tiny reptile and a satisfied female customer.
humor is key
Like most of The Martin Agency’s work for Geico, the new spots were funny and irreverent—a rarity in the world of insurance advertising. "Our relationship with them has lasted eight years now, and we’ve used humor right from the beginning," Bassett notes. "The two things we haven’t walked away from with Geico is the [slogan], ‘Fifteen minutes can save you 15 percent or more in car insurance,’ and that light-hearted approach. I think it’s been a smart marketing strategy. It’s grown their business, and Geico now has very high name recognition. It’s also made [the account] really fun to work on."
After the client approved the new spots, the Martin team set out to find a director with the right comic sensibility. They chose Stacy Wall of bicoastal Epoch Films. "Stacy was a great copywriter at Wieden+Kennedy before, and then he became a director," Bassett relates. "His reel is so funny—he just has this great sense of humor. When we spoke to Stacy about this campaign, I liked how he talked about the gecko as an actor. For example, Stacy wondered how the gecko would be when he was meeting the Taco Bell dog for the first time. Would it be tense between them, or are they two actors who maintain their professionalism despite an undercurrent of competition? It was that kind of conversation, as opposed to saying, ‘We’ll just film this and add the gecko in later,’ that drew us to him."
Wall and the creatives felt that the gecko should be "real, not too cartoonish," Bassett explains. "We wanted him to seem just like another actor in the ensemble." The agency once again worked with Rhythm & Hues Studios, Los Angeles, the shop that created the original gecko. "We never used a puppet—only CGI," Bassett explains. "As we talked about all the things the gecko had to do in these commercials—he had to run on the beach with a girl, and he had to drive a car, he had to go on an audition with a bunch of other actors. We felt like a puppet wouldn’t be able to do the things we wanted him to do."
The spots were filmed entirely on location, with the gecko added in postproduction. "When we were filming, we used a little, stuffed, stand-in gecko on a stick," Bassett remembers. "We used it so we could get perspective and eyelines; a basic feel for what scale he’d be if he were in the scene."
Bassett says the gecko was given "more human qualities," than he had in previous spots. "In the very first spot that was done with the press conference, he was on the microphone, and he was crawling around on all four legs," explains Bassett. "He’s now standing up on his hind legs, which helps him when he’s working on the computer or driving the car. For these spots, we had a lot of conversations with Rhythm & Hues about his walk, his leg movements, things like that. I think we ended up in a pretty good place, where he still feels like a gecko, but he’s a little more human."
Good casting also helped the Geico mascot come to life. In "Meadow," for instance, a woman and the lizard hold hands and run down the beach, spin around together in a field, and make a wish on a dandelion, among other activities. "The actress that we got for [‘Meadow’] was really great at pretending there was a gecko there with her," Bassett says. "Sometimes she was playing to the camera, sometimes to this invisible thing. If she wasn’t as talented, it wouldn’t have worked at all."
When they shot the actress "holding hands and spinning" with the gecko, Bassett remembers, "we just took a paper clip and unbent it to the length of what his arms would be. She spun holding the paper clip, and we retouched it out later. In the part where the gecko blows on the dandelion, there was a crew member off-camera, blowing through a straw."
For Bassett, working on the new campaign was, more or less, a breeze. Even the Chihuahua was an easy get: "Taco Bell just wanted to make sure the dog was used correctly. We sent them a script, and they were very helpful to us."
"Audition" broke in May, while the other spots in the package debuted in late July. Already, the response has been positive. "Geico has been getting a lot of letters from people saying, ‘I love your work. Thanks for not being so heavy, and for not taking yourself too seriously," says Bassett. "I don’t know many insurance companies that get letters like that."
