Ad Throwdown: Flo vs Gecko vs Mayhem (Recon Thursday/Promotion)

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing.  It is Recon Thursday and we are going to have some fun looking at how several companies are working to achieve recognition and recall.

Before we begin I want you to think about insurance companies and the ads you’ve seen on television.  What’s coming to mind?

The three insurance companies I immediately think of are Progressive, Geico and Allstate.  They are all competing for recognition and recall and are top of mind for me personally.

What those companies most want is that when I need insurance I will seek a quote from them.  None of them have brand dominance in my opinion, there is not one I think of to the exclusion of the others.  All are competing in the same product class and are doing a good job as a result of their advertising.

The following describes how these three companies have positioned themselves in recent television advertising.  For Progressive, Flo comes to mind.  She is dressed in white, in a very clean computer software store and she’s selling insurance packages.

Next, Geico.  When I think of Geico I do think of the Gecko and picture him and his Australian accent.  Geico also runs other campaigns including the recent insurance “taste test” and Maxwell the Pig who squeals in the back of a car.

And then you have Allstate who has been running ads around various situations involving Mayhem.  Mayhem is depicted as a bruised and battered man a result of some recent mishap.  The message: thank goodness for insurance that covers Mayhem.

Are these advertising campaigns doing a good job?  As I mentioned earlier, they’re all top of mind for me.  I thought of all of them as potential insurance companies for future business.  They’ve met their objective there.

Wondering if people would actually seek these commercials out on their own rather than only viewing them via television, I took a look at YouTube.

Progressive and Flo had as many as 300,000 views for one commercial.  Geico can boast 600,000 views for the gecko.  But the winner by far is Mayhem with 1.9 million views for one video.  People have taken time out of their life to actually go watch a commercial on YouTube.  I think that’s pretty impressive.

That concludes Recon Thursday stop by tomorrow for Digital Friday.  To discuss an online or face-to-face service engagement and enhance the marketing and branding for your organization, contact James Glover: (505) 501-1330 or onceadaymarketing@gmail.com.  I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing and we’ll see you next time.