Now, we’re all guilty of clicking the ‘Skip Ad’ button soon after sitting through the unavoidable five seconds whilst waiting to watch a video on YouTube - more than likely to watch a video of dancing dogs but that’s not our point. A huge 94% of all YouTube advertisements are skipped after the first mandatory five seconds have elapsed to reveal the saviour button, barely giving companies a chance to express their USP.
However a clever American Insurance Firm, Geico has created a new YouTube advertising campaign where the first five seconds are key to getting their brand across. It even continues into something that you were probably on YouTube to watch in the first place...
The ad named, Family: Unskippable opens to show a family sitting down to dinner, after five seconds a voiceover says “You can’t skip this Geico ad, it’s already over.” After that you will more than likely watch the rest anyway... the Geico logo remains permanently on the screen and the family can still be seen in the background as if they are frozen in time; but what happens next is really quite amusing for a YouTube ad...
A big and rather fluffy dog comes into view from the left hand side and continues towards the table. The dog proceeds to eat from Dad’s floating fork dangling with a generous helping of Spaghetti Bolognese. After polishing off Dad’s dinner, the dog catapults itself onto the table and turns dinner time into dinner rampage, eating the children’s meal, spilling over glasses of milk and quite amusingly avoiding the salad until the dog finally comes to Mum and the remaining Spag Bol jackpot!
The family; all of who are still frozen can be seen looking at each other just by the movement of their eyes. Mum’s look is especially funny as it is directed towards Dad and you can imagine her thoughts are “I thought I told you to put the dog out for dinner!”
Well played Geico... we really love the creativity of this ad and you’ve earned your place in the 6% of YouTube adverts that don’t get skipped!