Product: Geico Insurance
Concept: The President of Geico wanted to teach the Geico Gecko the meaning of a dollar, but the Gecko stole the dollar and bought chips
The Geico Gecko is a commercial icon at this point, and he is generally a charming fellow. However, in this commercial, one in a series where the Gecko appears with the President of Geico, he acts like a complete jerk.
The President of Geico saved the very first dollar he ever earned – which says something because he owns Geico and must be a billionaire. The night before, he made special care to take the dollar out, and remember to bring it to the office to show the Gecko. It was part of an inspiration speech the President of Geico planned to show the Gecko the value of a dollar.
However, the plan went off the rails when he went to talk to the Gecko – the dollar was missing! We learn that the Geico Gecko used the dollar in the Geico office vending mention to buy some chips.
So if I’m to understand what happened, before the meeting with the President of Geico, the Geico Gecko went into his office, climbed onto the desk and began snooping around. Then he spotted a crumpled-up old dollar bill and decided to steal it for a quick snack. Now keep in mind, the dollar bill itself is 2-3X the size of the Geico Gecko – that would be like me or you taking a 15 foot slab of something and stealing it.
Even if you can believe the Gecko could get this dollar to the vending machine, straighten it out so it went into the machine properly, chose a bag of chips, got the bag out of the machine, brought the bag back to the President of Geico’s office, opened the bag and started eating chips, the question still remains – why? Does he not get paid as the spokesperson for Geico? We’ve seen in previous commercials that the President of Geico bought the Geico Gecko a new suit – we can infer that the Gecko is properly compensated.
Before I jump to conclusions and just accuse the Geico Gecko of being a thief, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s possible that he assumed the dollar was left out for him to grab a snack and he innocently used it to buy chips. This is supported by the fact that he offered the President of Geico a chip when he realized what he had done. Nevertheless, not a proud moment for the Geico Gecko.
