Unskippable
Geico
Issue 35 | June 2015
Agency
The Martin Agency
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Joe Alexander Group Creative Directors Steve Bassett Wade Alger Associate Creative Directors Neel Williams Mauricio Mazzariol
Production Team
Executive Producer Brett Alexander Broadcast Producer Liza Miller Junior Broadcast Producer Coleman Sweeney
Other Credits
Business Affairs Supervisor Suzanne Wieringo Sr. Integrated Production Business Manager Amy Trenz Financial Manager Monica Cox Group Account Director Brad Higdon Account Supervisor Josh Lybarger Account Executive Allison Hensley Senior Project Manager Karen McEwan
Date
March 2015
Background
GEICO needed some new pre-roll content. They specifically asked how do we get people to not skip our ads? Sure, they could have uploaded any of their existing content and hoped for the best but they decided to create original content designed specifically for the pre-roll world that everyone hates.
Idea
The idea was simple and driven straight from the brief, in which the client requested content that people wouldn't want to skip. The idea was give them content they can't skip because by the time they could the ad was already over. The world's first unskippable pre-rolls were then birthed.
Results
Over 10 million views in the first month of the series, plus dozens of articles on some of the web's most popular news and entertainment sites (Huffington Post, front page of Reddit, Forbes, Time, etc.). These videos put the GEICO message in front of countless new customers and flipped the idea of pre-roll ads on its head, from something to be skipped and avoided, to something to be enjoyed and shared.
Our Thoughts
The Skip button is such a brilliant idea. It means that pre-roll ads have to be helpful, valuable or entertaining just to get watched. That should mean better ads that work better but, dismally, many advertisers just run their TV commercials without realising that pre-roll operates to a completely different set of rules. For starters, the end is the most important part of a TV ad., with the big reveal and the pack-shot. But it’s the beginning of a pre-roll ad that is vital. The Martin Agency have sussed this and, as a result, have created a sure-fire winner at Cannes this summer. If you really want to run a pre-roll ad that people won’t skip, you have to make an ad people can’t skip - because they are amazed or amused or both. The genius here is faking the freeze frame so we watch for a full minute the tiny tremblings of the family’s fixed smiles as the dog eats their spaghetti.