You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

Bit of a different format this week …

For a long while now, I’ve meant to do an Ad Space covering the Geico Gecko. I mean, how could I not? That little lizard is among the most well-known advertising icons out there – gotta give ’em a go around eventually.

Except I had a hard time finding anything to actually say about the character. Normally, I like to spotlight commercials that either do their job really well, do their job really poorly, or do their job really oddly – any of which would give us plenty to discuss. But the Geico Gecko commercials … in my experience, they stick firmly to baseline competence.

They have their formula, plopping the Gecko into various situations where they can give a spiel about Geico insurance, and never do anything really out there with it. They’re always amusing without being hilarious, get their point across without being ridiculously hyperbolic, and are just generally well-made without doing anything special.

But now, at last, I think they’ve made a fumble I can point and laugh at!

Though, even then, it’s only half a fumble.

See, this has to do with how commercials are often edited to fit into different blocks of airtime. You’ll have a long version of the ad (“long” here usually meaning thirty seconds), and another version that’s been cut down to just fifteen seconds. Ideally, the long and short versions get across all the same information – the long version will generally have better pacing and land its jokes better, but both will still be effective.

And that’s where the Gecko finally fell on its face.

This thirty second ad is the usual brand of decent-but-nothing-special I’ve come to expect from the Geico Gecko. It’s got a solid setup of introducing a serious sci-fi problem that’s derailed by the Gecko talking about insurance … but they solve the problem anyway, because it turns out all this space tech is run on 90’s video game consoles. A little quirky, but otherwise a solid and unremarkable commercial.

Except then they cut this ad down to fifteen seconds, and I don’t know if that editor was bad at their job, or if the material filmed just didn’t give them enough to work with, but the result is a mess.

They cut out the part about needing to stop a “warp rift”, so rather than reading as a space opera sendup, it’s just the Gecko randomly talking to a bunch of aliens. And since there’s no warp rift to stop, there’s no blowing-on-the-cartridge solution … but they still kept in the ending where one of the aliens says “Classic!” and they all laugh, even though there’s now nothing to prompt that line or that laughter (not unless you find the idea of insuring jewelry inherently hilarious).

With all the context of the full-length ad stripped out, what we get is a fifteen second ad spot that seems, more than anything, like a piece of dada filmmaking – just stuff happening with no effort to make sense or be satisfying.

…

Now that I’ve got all that griping off my chest, I’m feeling kinda guilty. I waited this long to give the Gecko some spotlight, and I lash out at this one, minor failure?

If anyone knows of some genuinely great Geico Gecko ads to balance this one out, please, share them down below.