Geico Cavemen

Cafe Society
21

[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
They make me more likely to AVOID Geico. Which is a shame, if only because I adore the Gecko. He’s just so damned cute.
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Yeah but let’s be honest here, are you really in the demographic that they’re targeting? They’re more interested in people who own automobiles.

I like the cavemen and don’t like the gecko but my only criterion for car insurance is price. They can have the shittiest commercials ever and I’ll buy from them if they’re the least expensive (which is AAA for me.)

22

I like the Caveman commercials. The first one had one as a PA on the commercial set. Since I do film from time to time, I found it amusing.

As for the Gecko, I think it should have an Australian accent. The Celebrity commercials are… okay. But I think they should either make some new ones or stop showing them. They’re getting boring.

23

[QUOTE=hajario]
Yeah but let’s be honest here, are you really in the demographic that they’re targeting? They’re more interested in people who own automobiles.

[/QUOTE]

Touche. But I think you know what I mean. My point is, the commercial will most likely end up turning people off.

24

“I’ll have the roast duck with the mango salsa” cracks me up.

25

[QUOTE=I Love Me, Vol. I]
Spot on. And there are many, too many other commercials with the same lame attempt to be so hip and so edgy that they just end up being nonsensical, unfocused, completely off-target, often quite mean in a petty, overly-materialistic way, and just generally juvenile, ineffective, and lame.

If these type of commercials had suddenly popped up in the 70’s or 80’s people would have probably burned their TV sets. Or, more likely, just avoided whatever crap the spots were pushing and ridiculing them at every opportunity.

But they didn’t appear back then. They weren’t even possible until the fashionably cynical 18-35 masses started going around flaunting their gauche “hip” badges; their mod-capitalist gang-signs marinated in herd-certified irony.

These hipster shit-spots came upon quickly (at the time of the Dot.com boom), yet gradually enough that while people were at first skeptical and kinda “WTF is this?” they soon became so inundated that they swiftly marched into line and started laughing at this crap because they thought they were supposed to. Plus, everyone else was laughing so… hey, join the crowd, right?

It’s all rather like some Simpsons episode where the locals of Springfield start acting like a mindless mob of sheep: “Hey look! CAVEMEN ARE TALKING LIKE MODERN PEOPLE! Huh huh huh he haaa !!!”

These crap-ads are just one more highly-visible symptom of the General Rot. We’re all frogs in a pot of sewage that is slowing being brought to a boil of self-serving, world-eating, me-centered bullshit.
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Well, I find the Caveman/Neanderthal commercials fairly amusing. And I thought I was a superannuated old Hippy. (Hey, I still like fok music.)

Glad to see I’m all ironic & keeping up with the “younger” generation.

Or–maybe I just got up on the right side of the rock this morning.

(Shouldn’t someone so appalled by modern culture just avoid TV altogether? Or invest in one of those newfangled “remote” gadgets, to protect their delicate sensibilities?)

26

Dude, I love when he’s in therapy and his mom calls his cell and he says he’s going to put her on speaker. Meanwhile, he’s a caveman.

27

Besides, the “no thanks, I don’t have much of an appetite” one is hot. He can drag me around by my hair anytime!*
*bigoted statement playing on caveman stereotype

28

[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
My point is, the commercial will most likely end up turning people off.
[/QUOTE]

I doubt it. Car insurance isn’t like a family restaurant or a battery or something where the product costs more or less the same and they have to rely on brand loyalty. With car insurance the cost can vary by huge amounts between companies and people will shop for the best price.

As a further complication, prices vary by huge amounts in different demographics (age, gender, location, accident history) so Company A might have the best price for a 22 year old female in Charlotte with one at-fault accident in the last year while Company B will have the best price for a 54 year old male in Los Angeles with no accidents ever. People have to price shop for the best rates for them.

As a result of all of this, insurance companies want people to try them when they are price shopping. No one is going to price check every possible company. They’ll try the one they currently have and two or three others. The others will be the first ones that come to mind. This means that companies want name recognition.

What’s the best way to have name recognition? Make ads that people are going to discuss a lot. The marketing campaign is brilliant.

29

Wow, I Love Me, Vol. 1,, the hostility is coming through loud and clear, but the rest of your post is lost on me. Do you hate commercials in general? Capitalism? 18 - 35 year olds? I’m not trying to be a smartass here; I genuinely don’t get what your beef is :confused:

30

Fictional. :dubious:

31

So, is that stupid frakin gecko supposed to be a Madagascan eye-spot day gecko, or what?

32

[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]
What are they?
[/QUOTE]
New Yorkers from the Fresh Kills neighbourhood of Staten Island.

33

[QUOTE=WOOKINPANUB]
Wow, I Love Me, Vol. 1,, the hostility is coming through loud and clear, but the rest of your post is lost on me. Do you hate commercials in general? Capitalism? 18 - 35 year olds? I’m not trying to be a smartass here; I genuinely don’t get what your beef is :confused:
[/QUOTE]

What’s wrong with a good screed now and then?

I can just see the cavemen, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.

34

I really like the advert where the caveman is in the airport with the Royksopp music playing.

I swear the airport he’s at is O’Hare, heading away from Concourse H/K towards G, but I’m not certain. As you can see by my location, I’ve been there a lot…

35

[QUOTE=I Love Me, Vol. I]
They weren’t even possible until the fashionably cynical 18-35 masses started going around flaunting their gauche “hip” badges; their mod-capitalist gang-signs marinated in herd-certified irony.
[/QUOTE]

Wait a minute – you think young people trying to be hip and following the herd started at a specific point in time? And that it didn’t happen before then?

Cite?

Sailboat

36

[QUOTE=JRDelirious]
(Which a True Fangeek would use to explain the lisp, since that form of human had a different oral/pharyngeal configuration.)
[/QUOTE]
Excellent! That speech impediment had bugged me but now that I know it is authentic, I can ignore it.

37

I love the cavemen! I think they whole add campaign was set up to jab viciously playful fun at the “offenderati” and the PC atmosphere to today. I also love the gecko.

38

[QUOTE=I Love Me, Vol. I]
…they soon became so inundated that they swiftly marched into line and started laughing at this crap because they thought they were supposed to. Plus, everyone else was laughing so… hey, join the crowd, right?
[/QUOTE]

This reminds me of when Cookies and Cream ice cream first came out. Upon ordering some at the local ice cream parlor, the amiable looking, but ultimately hostile guy behind the counter sneered at me and said, “You’re just getting that because everyone else does, right?” Actually I had tried it for the first time a few days earlier, and just really liked it.

I suspect this is what’s really happening with the Geico commercials. Some people just find them genuinely funny, myself included. “Me and Tina are getting back together!” Hunting and gathering ancients with leisure time on their hands. Hilarious.

39

[QUOTE=Fiddle Peghead]
This reminds me of when Cookies and Cream ice cream first came out.
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:eek:

There was a time when Cookies and Cream didn’t exist? Will you share your Civil War stories with us sometime? :smiley:

40

[QUOTE=betenoir]
:dubious: Wait a minute. Since when were Asian, African etc. etc. people not anatomically modern humans? Doesn’t seem like a good choice of name.
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The name stuck because the first “caveman” skeleton of modern human (or one of the first) was found in the Cro-Magnon cave in Les Eyzies, France, back in the mid-19th century. This was long before we had any real understanding of human evolution. European scientists at the time most likely thought modern humans evolved (or at least reached the “pinnacle of evolution”) in Europe. We now know that this population entered Europe ~150K years after H. sapiens first evolved in Africa.

But scientists often distinguish between what they call “AMH”, going back as far as 200k years ago, and more recent populations that seem to be more cultural advanced, starting around 75k years ago. There is some debate about whether the earlier populations had all the brainpower, including things like fully articulated speech, that the later populations had. Hence the term “anatomically modern humans”, to indicate that the we don’t know if they were “intellectually modern humans”.

As for the Geico cavemen… I’m sure they are supposed to be Neanderthals.