GEICO horror ad – “It’s what you do” is a killer commercial

I recently posted about the GEICO commercial “Flag Football with Jerome Bettis.” While that commercial is funny, it’s actually a terrible comparison… getting help from GEICO is “having Jerome Bettis on your flag football team easy,” while Jerome Bettis commits at least 5 penalty-worthy actions in one play.

Check out that post here.

But GEICO is known for having pretty hilarious commercials, so I thought I should point out one that’s been airing on and off for years. From what I could find, it was originally produced in 2015 and features a horror movie-like scene.

The tagline: “If you’re in a horror movie, you make poor decisions. It’s what you do.” It goes on to say if you want to save money on car insurance, switching to GEICO is “what you do.”

This spot is great because 1) it’s funny, 2) good acting and 3) it plays off of the stereotypes we all know from scary movies. The black person dies first. Someone goes off alone to do something… then dies. Everything happens at night. There’s usually one lone survivor. On and on the cliche’s go. If you want to see more of these stereotypes, just watch Scream 1, Scream 2, or Scream 3. Or Scary Movie, I suppose. Check out this article on who the actresses are in this ad.

The comparison of ‘this is what you do if you’re in a horror movie’ to ‘this is what you do if you want to save money on car insurance’ is easy to understand, and while the Jerome Bettis commercial misses the mark because it’s an inaccurate illustration, this horror ad hits it right on the head. Or should I say, slashes it?

-Out of the Wilderness