Everyone remembers the “Unskippable” Geico commercials that won the Film Grand Prix at Cannes last year and completely disrupted the car insurance industry. At the One Show Creative Summit, it was therefore a real pleasure to listen to Alexander and Alger talking about how they make car insurance advertising that is unskippable.

The most fundamental aspect of the Geico campaigns is that the client has always believed in disruption. In fact, their business model is centred on this and the fact that the client allows them to make mistakes is at the heart of this true client relationship.

The Martin Agency has been working off the same brief since 1994, but keeps refreshing it. They move their creative teams around, smashing the traditional pairing of art director/copy writers. For example, if someone has worked on Geico for years, they are paired with a new art director. Lots don’t get it and they move them off it.

There is always a filter to the “madness” of the creative work as every piece of Geico work has either a human or product truth. The evolution of media and the fact that people are watching so many screens has also worked in their favour. They test campaigns online and can determine if they are working by the ringing of the phones at Geico. If the phones don’t ring, they pull the ad and have another ready to air.

Tapping into true human behaviour

This is clearly a successful strategy as the Unskippable campaign that garnered them more awards than any other Geico campaign, is based on the fact that most people skip pre-roll ads after the first five seconds. So they needed to win them over in the first five seconds, and that they did. In fact, the Unskippable campaign received a staggering 7.5m views in the first week it aired. The average viewing time is 48 seconds of their ad, which is fundamentally the Geico logo. The success here was the fact that they tapped into a true human behaviour.

The business results of the Geico campaign are testimony to their creativity. In the years that The Martin Agency has been working on the brand, Geico moved from number nine to number two in the category. Quite an accomplishment and yet another reason why the Martin Agency’s work with long-standing client Geico played a large hand in three special awards: Agency of the Year, Client of the Year for Geico and the inaugural Penta Pencil, which recognises a productive creative relationship between agency and client over a five-year period.

"Winning Agency of the Year is huge, but I’m most proud of the Penta,” said Joe Alexander, CCO of The Martin Agency. “Doing great work that brings great results consistently year after year is tough to do. Like Warren Buffet has said, ‘When I count my blessings at night, I count GEICO twice.’ We couldn’t agree more, Mr Buffett.”