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 safe 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 unhappy 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 difficulty 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 great 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 screen TV and even an IPod. When you enter the kitchen of the picturesque bachelor pad, you are able to click and hear voice 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.
