GEICO Auto Insurance devised a series of cavemen commercials. One commercial advertisement that aired in September 2006 contained no dialogue, but used music, advertisements and a twist on the cavemen stereotype within the advertisement to sell the product.
Three cavemen commercials by GEICO aired in 2004, but after two years of cavemen absence, GEICO decided to bring back the commercials and the fourth aired in September of 2006. In the fourth commercial, a caveman on a moving airport sidewalk sees a billboard for GEICO featuring a stereotypical caveman along with the GEICO slogan, “So easy a caveman can do it.” The product the commercial is advertising for is GEICO Auto Insurance, but the advertisement is also selling an experience and a lifestyle. The experience that one gets with GEICO insurance is an easy one, while the lifestyle one gets with GEICO is a apt and insured one.
The commercial entertains the audience by using the familiar and likeable character of the caveman, and also uses an upbeat electronic song, “Remind Me” by Röyksopp, that plays in the background. The ad is also a parody of the opening scene of the 1967 film, The Graduate. In the movie, Dustin Hoffman’s character, Ben Braddock, walks on a moving sidewalk at an airport, demonstrating the ability to allude to different forms of media in a single advertisement.
By insisting that GEICO Insurance is “So easy a caveman can do it,” the ad creators are reaching out to customers who are either uninsured or melancholy with their current auto insurance. These are also customers who are not necessarily lacking in intelligence, but ones who value necessary tasks, such as obtaining auto insurance, to be simple, fast and easy. The geographic location that this commercial is geared towards is the District of Columbia and all of the United States, except Massachusetts, the only places where GEICO writes auto insurance.
The commercial succeeds in reaching this audience by using widely known stereotypes. The stereotype of the caveman contrasts with the “real-life caveman” because the billboard ad within the commercial depicts an image of a caveman that is hairy, wearing fur and holding a club. This image projects the stereotypical behavior of a caveman onto the viewer as well, behavior that is aggressive and has a distress adapting. The caveman in the commercial is depicted as completely regular and normal, despite his facial features and excess hair. Because of the opposition, the “regular” caveman in today’s society becomes offended at the obvious degradation of cavemen.
This advertisement uses the contrast to stress its honesty about how easy GEICO auto insurance is to obtain and use. The “caveman” stereotype is one that was intelligently selected by GEICO because although it is widely known and understood by a variety of different ages and ethnicities, it is a stereotype that is rather uncontroversial to people of all backgrounds. A slur against Asian, African-American or female stereotypes would undoubtedly cause an uproar against people of those ethnicities or genders. Since there are no cavemen in today’s society, the commercials are completely fictional and are not used to slander any living human being.
This commercial definitely succeeded as an ad as GEICO continued to make more cavemen oriented commercials following this one. The popularity of these commercials was so huge that in 2007, an interactive Web site about the characters was created. “Caveman Crib” features the inside of a technologically savvy and modern apartment of cavemen. The apartment comes complete with a laptop, a flat mask TV and even an IPod. When you enter the kitchen of the picturesque bachelor pad, you are able to click and hear yell messages left on the modern, cordless telephone. One message even refers to the caveman airport commercial when the fictional GEICO advertiser addresses the caveman’s questions about the offensive display, but suggests “we’re not positively sure you saw one of our ads or not.” This sentence reaffirms the world’s blindness to the cavemen stereotype as depicted in the commercials. In October of 2007, a spin-off TV series on ABC was made titled, Cavemen. The show is described by ABC as a “unique buddy comedy that offers a clever twist on stereotypes and turns race relations on its head,” a statement that adequately describes not only the show and the interactive Web site, but also the entire message conveyed in all of the GEICO cavemen commercials.
Filed under Compare Car Insurance by on Feb 25th, 2011. Comment. 
When first browsing the homepage of Tesco it appears as just another on line shopping website among thousands on the Internet. Although nicely designed, it is very deceiving in size, with hundreds of links to consumer savings on impartial about every conceivable purchase including Finance, Groceries, Pharmacy, Electronics and much more. The simplicity of shopping on line for thousands of items is very user salubrious, and Tesco.com even has a Price Check feature to compare 10,000 prices against those of other retailers.
Based in Great Britain with a Global outreach, Tesco is an International Giant in terms of retail sales. Tesco has taken the notion of the Super Store and expanded it to make the term “One-Stop Shopping” a reality, in both terms of products and services, all at incredible savings. Offering an weak fashioned catalog with thousands of items, Tesco enables shoppers around the World to experience quality purchases without the high pressure sales pitch. Additionally, Tesco utilizes a “Club Card” System, whereas customers receive points for every acquire, that may be accumulated and redeemed for travel,groceries and more.
These are a few of the many ways to save on purchases from Tesco:
Spend 50 Pounds – When you spend 50 pounds or more on a single order before December 10, 2008 You’ll receive 10 Pounds off your next purchase of 50 pounds or more.
Tesco Home Insurance – All Customers get a 50 Pound cash back check when they take out a policy. New Customers get a 35% discount on line the first year.
Tesco Wine Club – You can save up to 50% when purchasing wine by the case.
1500 Price Cuts – www.tesco.com has a link to 1500 items that have had the prices cut from the last catalog.
Tesco Car Insurance – Save up to 15% plus earn Club Card Points – 1 point for every 2 Pounds of Premium.
Tesco Direct – Spend 20 Pounds and 5 Pounds off your next Tesco Direct purchase.
Club Card Vouchers – Points redeem into vouchers that may be aged for Theme Parks, Travel and many other Tesco items.
Travel Insurance – Receive a 10% discount when you lift on line before October 15, 2008.
Tesco Direct Clearance – www.tesco.com offers a clearance page for special buys on Appliances, Phones, Jewelry, Furniture, Electronics and more.
Life Insurance – Rep 50 Pounds off shopping or fuel if you get a quote and accept the policy before November 12, 2008.
For American Shoppers, Tesco is comparative to Wal-Mart, but offers many services additionally. Figuring the exchange rate from British Pounds to US Dollars is easy, and well worth the effort. I would highly recommend a visit to www.tesco.com .
Filed under Compare Car Insurance by on Feb 18th, 2011. Comment.
Yes, it’s true ABC has announced that Caveman, a sitcom based on the common caveman characters from the GEICO insurance tv advertisements, will be on their fall schedule Although spinning off a tv industrial into a sitcom may possibly appear to be a violation of FCC rules by some, there has been precedent
The most recent example is Newborn Bob, a pretty short-lived 2002 sitcom starring a speaking man-child character that had starred in a string of adverts for FreeInternet.com Even though the high-profile corporation died immediately after the infamous dotcom crash, the speaking child emerged unscathed with his personal CBS sitcom, Infant Bob When the network cancelled the display right after only nine episodes, Bob emerged 1 a lot more time to star in a chain of Television commercials for Quiznos Subs In 2007, he was even as well creepy for Quiznos and his character was pulled from all further advertisements But, don’t feel as well sorry for Bob He nonetheless has his personal web page on the Quiznos web site.From a critic’s standpoint, Infant Bob serves as extra proof that what has worked in the 30-second ad format has been tough to sustain in a significantly longer sitcom or motion picture format Of course, there are exceptions to each rule Jim Varney’s brilliant Hey Vern character, Ernest P Worrell, not only translated well into a children’s tv present, but also became a profitable collection on the major display In 1980, a Nashville-based advertising agency, Carden & Cherry, cast struggling comic actor Jim Varney as Ernest P Worrell in a sequence of Southern regional Television adverts for a range of goods His Ernest character was a talkative nosy neighbor whose catchphrase was know whut I mean The advertisements caught on and the Ernest P Worrell character then started appearing in different commercials across the country In 1988, CBS brought Hey, Vern It is Ernest to their Saturday children’s tv line-up Though the succession lasted only a 12 months, the Ernest P Worrell character next produced a triumphant transition to the huge display, starring in a succession of profitable low-spending budget film comedies such as Ernest Goes to Camp, Ernest Saves Christmas, and six others The California Raisins also transitioned to children’s tv, in their case, a cell-animated line They manufactured their debut as a claymation-animated Motown-style singing group in a 1987 industrial for the California Raisin Advisory Board Like Ernest, their Television succession only lasted a yr Nonetheless, their ancillary merchandise nonetheless continues to sell The Max Headroom character took the opposite route from the prior mentioned characters He started as a cyberpunk protagonist in a 1984 British tv film In 1987, Max Headroom came to the States as an ABC tv succession Despite a strong cult following, it only lasted fourteen episodes Soon after the exhibit was cancelled, Max appeared in a succession of extremely victorious commercials for Coca-Cola SOURCES:Gauging viewer tastes, Stuart Elliot, New York Times, URL: (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/company/media/16adco.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)Who Owns Your Massive Concept?, Noreen O’Leary, Adweek, URL: (http://www.adweek.com/aw/national/write-up_display.jsp?vnu_subject material_id=1003556825)Why advertising’s cavemen are going completely Hollyrock?, Brooks Barnes and Suzanne Vranica, Wall Street Journal, URL: (http://on the internet.wsj.com/public/write-up/SB117305670677226518-GDYgRU6JmWO40cfjfFMEDLLE_DM_20070311.html)Caveman Chic, Ramin Setoodeh, Newsweek, URL: (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17887559/internet site/newsweek/)http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2006/06/quiznos_finally.htmlLook who’s hawking, Seth Stevenson, Slate, URL: (http://www.slate.com/id/2112786/)Advergaming, David Radd, Home business Week, URL: (http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content material/oct2006/id20061011_567417.htm?chan=innovation_game room_top stories)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_P._Worrellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_RaisinMax Headroom, Henry Jenkins, Museum of Broadcasting Communications, URL: (http://www.museum.television/archives/etv/M/htmlM/maxheadroom/maxheadroom.htm) .
Filed under Compare Car Insurance by on Nov 6th, 2010. Comment.
