GEICO has been responsible for many of the best commercials that I’ve seen in recent years. Even when I don’t like them, I see that they are effective. Most of my friends hate them. This is probably because most of my friends are miserable bastards who insist upon being dissatisfied. I try not to take it as a personal slight — as effective as I may be at displeasing people. Anyway, I wanted to share two recent commercials that I admire.
In 2012, GEICO spent $1.1 billion on advertising. Most of that money no doubt goes to broadcasting. But they’ve got to pay a lot for the creation of content. I generally think there is a whole lot more creativity in the advertising community than in Hollywood. Not that there is much difference. See, for example, any superhero film.
The recent “What’s Your Reason” ads were created (apparently from concept to completion) by DCP Productions. I really like these ads. My friends hate them. But really, what’s not to like? The song is catchy as hell and the animation is simple and compelling:
Some of their biggest campaigns in the past were done by The Martin Agency. This includes the gecko and caveman ads, which (again), I like. My friends (again): not so much. I think there is a special hatred for the caveman commercials, but I’m not sure why. Recently, I’ve discovered another Martin Agency ad that I think is fabulous, “Free Range Chicken.” I haven’t talked to any of my friends about it, but it will speak ill of them if they don’t like this charming story:
I’ll admit: I just like chickens — especially when anthropomorphized to one extent or another. This commercial reminds me of Chicken Run when Rocky says, “You see, I’m a traveller by nature. I did that whole barnyard thing for a while but I couldn’t really get into it… The open road, that’s more my style. Yep, just give me a pack on my back and point me where the wind blows. In fact, you know what they call me back home? You’re gonna love this: The Lone Free Ranger.” Ah, chicken humor! You gotta love it, right? Right?
There was something that I ran into while researching this article. People have the wrong idea about how advertising works. They seem to be stuck in the early 19th century when advertisements were very straightforward: “I have something I would like to sell to you if you are looking for this something.” GEICO doesn’t spend a billion dollars per year to convince people that they are the best or cheapest insurance. They do it so that when you go shopping for insurance, you will think of the company. It is not surprising that the last time I bought auto insurance, I bought it from Esurance. I had no recollection of ever seeing an ad, but I now know that Esurance is one of the most advertised insurance companies in the world — although not nearly as advertised as GEICO.
So given that we are not very rational creatures and the corporate world totally manipulates us, the least we can do is to have entertaining commercials. Of course, GEICO spends 6.8% of its premiums on advertising — over twice that of the next biggest advertiser, Progressive. You might take that into account even while noticing that that’s a mighty fetching chicken. Just because we aren’t very rational doesn’t mean we can’t be more rational. Regardless, no one will buy GEICO insurance specifically because of the chicken. Or the rattlesnake.
Conservatives have been cheered by sightings of Ronald Reagan at small events in Iowa. The reanimated corpse of the 40th president has set up an exploratory committee to look into another presidential run. The reanimated corpses of Lee Atwater and William Casey have already signed onto the campaign in exchange for an undisclosed amount of living flesh. “Just like in the 1980 campaign,” Atwater said in an email.
Because I was bored, I spent far too much time over at 
My real question is whether this “bike-thru” will allow walkers. When I was a kid without a car, the fast food places would not serve us on foot. They claimed that it had something to do with their insurance. I’ve never been to Copenhagen, but if it is anything like Davis, then walkers have as much to worry about from bikes as they do from cars. The whole thing makes me wonder why they didn’t just make a “walk-thru.” The bicyclists could still use it. The reason for having a drive-thru is because most drivers are lazy bastards who don’t want to get out of the car. That isn’t an issue on a bike. You are already outside, which you will notice when your “McBike” container splatters all over the ground.
The third story comes to us from sort of an actual newspaper, The Daily Telegraph. But you wouldn’t know it from this important article, 
The game show Jeopardy! is 51 years old today. But it hasn’t been on all that time. It started on NBC and ran from 1964 through 1979, with a two year absence from 1976 through 1978. During that period, it was hosted by Art Fleming. Then, after four years off the air, it was brought back in syndication with the new host Alex Trebek. It was created by Merv Griffin, who created pretty every “normal” game show you can think of. (All right, that’s a vast exaggeration.)
Why is the Congress rolling over and letting this communist dictator destroy my country! Y’all know what he is and I know what he is. I want him out of the White House, he’s not a citizen. He could’ve been removed a long time ago. Larry Klayman’s the one who got the judge to say that the executive amnesty is illegal.
We learned two important lessons about the Islamic State from our friends in Europe today. And we learn something important about Europe as well: the people there can be as silly as they are here.
Less than three weeks before Islamic State sympathizers didn’t start hanging flags in Italy, the terrorist group was not busy Sweden. A pedestrian was walking down the street, when she looked up and saw a large “IS” sign proudly displayed in an apartment window. As far as I can tell, “Islamic State” in Swedish is “Islamisk Stat.” So okay: IS could have indicated that some Swedish terrorist cell had decided to go public. But alas, it was not that.
This last week, I discovered one of my favorite things in the world: an eccentric. Her name is Mary Greeley and she has 
A little bit of The Onion goes a long way. So I don’t read it every day. But once a week, it is good for a half hour of hoots. When I stopped by the other day, two things really stuck out to me. One of them was a video, which I’ll discuss below. But the first was one of the funniest — and insightful — things I’ve seen in a long time, 
Is it the intention of Comedy Central to promote anarchy here in the United States? I’m not talking about revolutionary comedy or contrarian views. I’m talking about something important. I’m talking about map madness.
On this day in 1903, the great character actor