Car insurance is all about top of mind awareness. Trouble is, the industry spends billions of dollars on TV media, everyone grabbing for the same customers in the same places. We needed to breakthrough on TV in a big way. Heading into a crucial insurance shopping season, we wanted to get people engaging with GEICO and talking about the brand to help keep GEICO top of mind.

We re-aired 10 of our “greatest commercial hits” spanning 25 years. Amazingly, the messaging has been so consistent over 2+ decades that they all still worked together as a cohesive campaign. Each of the 10 TV commercials was tagged with a CTA to vote at geico.com/bestof. We also created an infomercial-themed promo TV campaign driving viewers to the same site. After voting, visitors could enter for a chance to appear in an upcoming GEICO ad, becoming a part of American advertising history.

Car insurance, in general, requires a wide media net. As a result, GEICO has a very broad media buy across a full range of networks and demos across the country. The strategy here, though, was to turn off almost all new creative work and give the full, existing media weight over to this “Best of” campaign for three straight months. Several of the classic TV films also ran in high-profile media placements such as the Oscars telecast.

First we got people excited with a promo campaign in mid-December, laying the groundwork for the main body of work and direct response URL. These ran in a national broadcast TV media buy. Then, just as people were bingeing TV over the holidays, we released the classic TV films at full force. These ran across the country on broadcast TV for two months straight. Once voting ended, the top 5 TV commercials continued airing on national broadcast TV for another month and a sweepstakes winner was selected to star in an upcoming GEICO ad (airing May 2019).

85,384,326 online views; 1,125,325 votes; 420,481 sweepstakes entries, #1 most shared TV films on social media (numerous weeks during campaign); Top 5 Most-remembered Super Bowl commercials (but we DIDN’T run a Super Bowl ad!).