Can Geico really save you on car insurance? Does it take two to tango?
And then they cut to three people tangoing, and the third person is just in the way and not doing it well.
But it seems to me that they are missing the point of the saying. Isn’t the point of the saying is that it requires two people not one. It seems to me that the point of the saying is that one is not enough, not that three is too many. I guess 3 is funnier visually for the commercial than 1 would be, but it is getting the nuance of the saying wrong.
Who agrees with me in my interpretation of the saying
I haven’t seen that one, but the one I think they’re missing the point on is “Do woodchucks chuck wood?” and they cut to some woodchucks chucking wood into the water. However, the tongue twister goes “how much wood would a woodchuck chuck, IF a woodchuck COULD chuck wood?” Meaning they DON’T but if they could, how much could they? So… they really can’t can they?
You’ve answered your own question. The ad agency’s intent is to make the commercials, and by extension, the brand itself, memorable – perhaps even to inspire viewers to discuss it on the internet. Would you have felt compelled to post anything if they’d only shown one dancer attempting a tango?
Commercials don’t have to make sense, they just have to make an impression.
Part of the joke behind the commercials is to play on your expectations. When you first see the commercial, you’re expecting it to cut to just one person tangoing. The fact that it’s three is what makes it funny. Like the “Bird in the hand” one cutting to someone have a ceramic figure of a bird in the hand on Antiques Roadshow.
I agree with this. It totally undermines the point of the commercial. When the guy says “Can Geico… save…; do woodchucks chuck wood?” I always answer “no.”
The two-to-tango isn’t very good, either, but it’s not as egregious as the woodchucks. The usual meaning of “it takes two to tango” is that one is not sufficient. It doesn’t really apply to three.
So, the tango one is a non-sequitor, but the woodchucks are just wrong.
No, and piggies don’t really hang out the window of a minivan and cry, “WHEEEEE! WHEEEEEE! WHEEEEE!” either What would it look like if woodchucks could chuck wood? You just have to let it paint a silly picture in your mind. They don’t sit on the bank of a pond and giggle maniacally, either, but the humor makes the product stick in your mind. It reminds me of the gopher from “Caddyshack.” You don’t have to analyze it. Humor doesn’t have to stick to logic.
I actually know a bit about this particular topic – I work in advertising, have a big insurance company as a client, and I’ve seen extensive research on how consumers react to different companies’ ads.
Geico ads are, indeed, polarizing – some people thing they’re hilarious, some people think they’re dumb. But, an **awful lot **of people (most people, in fact) fall into the first camp.
Wow. What a bevy of literalists here. The woodchuck commercial (along with the piggy commercial) has me in stitches every time. The commercials are playing on the imagery with the associated aphorisms/tongue twisters/etc, not their meaning. A group of mischievous woodchucks chucking a farmer’s stash of firewood into a pond? Funny. A group of woodchucks standing around being woodchucks not chucking wood? Well, you could perhaps make it funny, but it’s not knee-slappingly funny like the chucking version.
I dunno, the Geico commercials are one of the few commercials I look forward to seeing.
I like this series, as I liked their “celebrity translating for an ordinary person” series of a few years back. Indifferent to the Gecko, and actively disliked the Cavemen.
So, given that they usually have a couple of different approaches on the air at the same time, presumably appealing to somewhat different demographics, I would say they have an effective ad agency.