Geico's ad agency loves to come up with ads that make people scratch their heads, laugh, then scratch their heads again. But at least they get attention. There are the gecko ads, of course. Then you've got the ultra-sophisticated cavemen, "Tiny House", and a bunch of other ads that have little to do with insurance but a lot to do with creativity. Now, Geico has put out a set of commercials where real customers recount their positive experiences with the company, backed up by the stylings of old-time celebrities like Charo, Little Richard, and composer Burt Bacharach.The Charo and Little Richard commercials are OK... Charo does her "coochie coochies" and Richard does his best "rock preacher" schtick. But the Bacharach ad creeps me out a bit. In it, a woman recounds getting rear-ended by a Geico customer, and being converted to the company by her dealings with it on that accident. All the while, Burt is spastically singing random song snippets like "I got hit... in the reeeeaaaarr...." Let's just say that Burt didn't look all that... healthy during the ad. I tried Googling to see if he had any health problems, but I couldn't find anything. Does he always look like that when he's playing? Please let me know in the comments.
(And little did I realize as I Googled for news of his health problems that Burt now blogs at The Huffington Post. Hey, so do I! Jeez, they'll just let anyone blog over there, won't they?)
(I'm talking about me, of course, not Bacharach.)
1. I had the same reaction to the ad - if he normally moves like that when he plays (it's been a while since I've seen Burt), but I do recall that his singing was just awful. He is a tremendous talent at composing, but he was smart to let others sing his songs. The ad is painful to watch and the lady paired with him looks downright uncomfortable. The ad campaign is kind of lame - they need to stick with what works - the gecko, cavemen, even tiny house was amusing. This is just pitiful.
Posted at 1:46PM on Jul 26th 2006 by Vanessa