Lately, it seems like insurance companies have been putting a lot of effort into creating advertisements that will really catch the attention of potential customers. My husband found one from Geico in our mailbox today. It looks like a cute little magazine.
It is inevitable that you will find a certain amount of “junk mail” waiting for you when you go to empty your mailbox each day. For us, this generally consists of an batch of advertisements, much like one would find placed inside a newspaper. We don’t actually have any subscriptions to newspapers though, so it is somewhat strange to receiving the advertisement portion anyway.
Today, inside the bundle of ads was something from Geico. We don’t have any insurance through Geico, and we are not looking to buy any insurance right now. So, normally, we would have ignored it. This particular ad was really cute though, which made me want to pick it up.
This ad was in the form of a mini “magazine” called “G Magazine”. I assume the G stands for Geico. It’s tiny, and only about four or five pages long. This edition says it is volume V, which makes me wonder if there are other versions of this out there, somewhere. The edition of the magazine ad thing has an “exclusive” about “Gecko Sightings Draw Big Crowds”.
If you flip through the mini magazine, you can see pictures from the Gecko’s trip across the United States. He’s standing in front of Niagra Falls in one photo. A two page photo shows him in front of Mt. Rushmore. Other, smaller, photos show him at the Statue of Liberty, the Space Needle, and more. You basically get to check out the vacation photos of a fictional, animated, mascot for an insurance company.
In other words, Geico made their advertisement entertaining enough for me to decide to pick it up, and flip through it, even though I have no interest in buying insurance right now. Whoever designed the cute little mini magazine did a excellent job.
There is another fun little form of advertising that Geico is doing right now. You can download several different ringtones from their website for free. All of them are ads for Geico, but they are really amusing.
I like the one called “If It’s Your Mum”, which is a recording of the voice of The Gecko, telling you that someone is calling you. He advises that if the caller is your mum, to tell her you love her. There is another one called “Piggy” which plays the voice of the pig from the Geico commercial where the pig was in the back of the truck, crying “wee wee wee” all the way home. There are plenty of others to choose from. Obviously, whenever someone hears one of these ringtones, they are going to think of Geico.
Image by mr_t_77 on Flickr