video commercials

Humor

Geico “You Can’t Skip These Ads”

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Viewers hate YouTube preroll ads, those irksome commercials that run before you get to watch the real YouTube video you want to see. One survey revealed that 94 percent of viewers will hit the “Skip Ad” button as soon as it appears. But advertisers keep sticking their commercials up there, presumably in the belief that the few they don’t annoy will embrace their message fondly and run out to buy their product.

This brings us to the Geico preroll, created by The Martin Agency in Richmond, Virginia. In a YouTube ad campaign that can only be viewed as experimental, the car insurance giant crammed its ad message into the critical first five seconds, and then spent the next 60 seconds having the main actors freeze motionless, while absurd actions happened around them. The only mention of Geico was the brand name that stayed on the screen. I didn’t get it, but thought it was funny anyway. I watched it three times to see if I was missing a deeper message. The only thing that annoyed me was that a preroll ad for another product ran before I could watch the Geico ad. I hit “Skip Ad” on that one as soon as it let me.
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Humor

Sienna Minivan Video Taps Your Inner Rapper

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Few things say that you spend most of your time driving kids to soccer games and making cupcakes for bake sales than being seen behind the wheel of a minivan. It fairly shouts that you have a house in the suburbs with a square patch of lawn in front and a kid’s swing set in the backyard, and are more likely to spend weekends at a petting zoo than at a trendy art opening. Parenting is cool, but it isn’t COOL like Kanye West, hip-hop, rapper cool, if you know what I mean. This funny video ad tackles this stigma head-on by having a middle-class, middle-aged couple rap proudly about making jell-o molds, changing diapers and owning a Toyota Sienna Minivan, which they refer to as their “Swagger Wagon.” Created by Saatchi & Saatchi, the video has gone viral and spawned a whole series of new Swagger Wagon commercials.