When we wrote last week about GEICO’s misleading “Ceiling Drip” commercial, we were hoping enough people would see the story, then see the commercial, and realize that something wasn’t right. Our goal was to demonstrate to viewers that, while insurance can be confusing, there is now a resource to assist them in understanding what they’re buying.
Amazingly, something else happened first. After we published the post and sent it out to a fairly small group of people we know, the next day the ad disappeared.
Disappeared as in it stopped airing on TV, it was removed from GEICO’s website, and scrubbed from its YouTube channel with their library of past commercials. There are still a few places you can find it (search “google ceiling drip commercial”) but GEICO has essentially erased the commercial from history.
Save Me Time!
- GEICO deleted its misleading Ceiling Drip commercial after we criticized it.
- We can’t prove why they did so, but it seems like more than a coincidence.
- We speculate on what their reasons may have been for removing the ad.
The Rest of the Story
Why did GEICO show such urgency? Remember, this was within 24 hours of our post. We had barely 100 views. We didn’t put out a press release. They shouldn’t have even known we were out there. But, apparently, they did.
And, it seems, took it seriously enough to immediately pull the ad. Not just because the campaign was over and it was time for a new campaign. No, they deleted it from their archives.
Was that really because of us? We don’t know. If it’s a coincidence, well, then it’s a hell of a coincidence.
If it was us, then I guess we proved that our criticism was so spot on, that they felt compelled to immediately pull it off the air before we could reach a wider audience. That’s an awfully nice compliment, but a little disappointing relative to our goal of raising awareness about confusing advertising practices.
By the way, GEICO first ran this ad five years ago. They apparently thought so much of it that they brought it out of retirement over the last year. Yet, in all that time, nobody there found anything problematic.
Then, we start asking questions and it’s shut down in a day! You can draw your own conclusions about what that means, but I’d say it makes a pretty compelling case for who you should trust to inform you about your insurance.
Solving The Mystery
So what now? Now we have a mystery to solve. Is the ad truly gone forever? Did we cause them to pull it or could there be another reason? If it was in response to us, can we get confirmation of that? So get yourself some Scooby snacks while we search for clues.
Here are some of our theories with thoughts on how likely they may or may not be:
#1: It’s a coincidence
Maybe there is nothing to see here? After all, coincidences happen. Perhaps the plan was always to switch out the ad before the Super Bowl and we just posted our story immediately in advance of that?
If that’s the case though, why would they delete the ad online? There is no other reason to remove it from the archives, is there?
#2: They reacted to the increased link traffic
Somebody in IT saw too many clicks on the one ad coming from one site and threw up a red flag.
This has the same flaw as the first theory though. How do you explain the ad disappearing from TV at the same time?
#3: They pulled it, but it wasn’t because of us
Hmm, I guess it’s possible something else negative came out at the same time?
Perhaps kids around America were setting up pools in their home and GEICO was getting angry calls from parents? Maybe there was a ransomware attack just on that one ad and GEICO decided to cancel the ad, rather than pay the ransom?
I can’t eliminate these possibilities, even though they seem highly unlikely.
#4: GEICO saw our post, agreed with our criticism, and pulled the ad to make edits
While it may seem hard to believe that someone at GEICO found the post so quickly, it’s certainly possible.
As mentioned, they may have noticed increased clicks on the ad from our site or been tipped off by a reader given our trial audience is heavy on insurance professionals. In this scenario, the ad has only been removed temporarily and will return later with some new voiceover and additional disclaimers.
I have no way of knowing how likely this is, but it sounds plausible.
#5: A partner of GEICO’s saw our post and alerted them to it
One other misleading part of the ad is it is implied you are buying a GEICO insurance policy. You’re not.
If you listen closely (well, I guess you can’t do that anymore, but trust us on this), the gecko is promoting the GEICO insurance agency. The reason for that is GEICO doesn’t offer home insurance. They broker it for other insurers.
Thus, the gecko isn’t promising GEICO will pay for the kids in the pool. No, it is promising all its insurance partners will!
Could it be one of them read our story and realized this was problematic and asked GEICO to pull the ad?
Well, mathematically, this is more likely than GEICO finding it on its own since GEICO uses multiple home insurance providers. Thus, there is a better chance someone from one of those companies saw our story than assuming only a GEICO employee did.
It’s also more likely that GEICO would react to a request from a business partner than to assume they were worried about some new company they had never heard of.
However, we have no evidence for this, so the best we can say is it sounds more logical than the other theories.
#6: GEICO saw our post, agreed with our criticism, and decided to permanently cancel the ad
This would be similar to #4, but rather than edit it for the future, they retired the ad.
It’s possible they did this because the ad’s run was almost up and it was simpler to end it early than risk a controversy? That’s easy enough to understand, though most of their retired ads continue to exist online rather than be deleted.
We did find another missing ad about GEICO supporting the military. Maybe this ran afoul of USAA and had to be pulled?
There is one other thing that may have been on their mind when they saw our criticism. A number of years ago GEICO was forced to pull an ad that a regulator found misleading.
Perhaps they are overly cautious since then about any ads that make ambiguous claims? If so, this would clearly explain why they were so quick to pull the ad rather than take their time evaluating it or reach out to us to address our concerns.
A Request to GEICO
Again, we can’t prove any of these theories without comment from GEICO. We are merely speculating based on what makes sense to us. There may be another answer we haven’t considered as well.
But based on what scenarios we can imagine, it feels to us like the ad disappearing was not mere coincidence. We would very much be interested in hearing the real answer from GEICO though.
We are big believers in transparency at Informed. Whatever reason GEICO has for stopping the ad, we think it’s important that consumers know and hear it from them, rather than us speculating about it.
If one of you reading this tipped off GEICO last week, please do me a favor and ask them to reply and tell us what happened. After all, they owe that to their customers.
What Do You Think?
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