Marketing II - GEICO and My Lack of Loyalty

In marketing, it's fairly common to hear that people only see your ad once every three times they're exposed to it. On top of that, they don't begin to absorb the ad until they've seen it seven times. In short, it can take 21 impressions before your ad sinks in.

Let's conservatively assume I've seen GEICO's ads at least 10 times every week during football season since 2004 when the Cavemen ads debuted. With 20 weeks a season plus 10 weeks this season, that's 1,700 GEICO impressions over 170 weeks of football.

It took them a while, but GEICO finally got me.

You know how their ads claim you can save 15% or more in just 15 minutes? With equal or better coverage on every single line of my bill when compared to State Farm, I wound up with...

State Farm: $56.93 / month
GEICO: $35.23 / month

...or a little over 38% less. It's not a huge amount of money, but for my 15 minutes of effort I shaved $260 off my annual bills.

Now, money isn't everything but if I pay more, you have to make up for the lack of savings in some capacity. If you don't provide a benefit to my loyalty, I'm not loyal. Apple makes better quality products than Samsung, Jif tastes better than government peanut butter, and my current apartment has fewer arrests in the parking lot than the last one. (I still live next to a drug dealer, but this one is really friendly. Great guy.)

Which left me wondering what State Farm and agent Terry Strickland gave me for their higher price. Over my 10+ years with Mr. Strickland, I don't recall ever hearing from him directly. In fact, the only time I heard out of State Farm was when (a) they sent me a bill, (b) they sent me junk mail or (c) they sent me preprinted holiday cards. Aside from the gift of murdering trees for print pieces that I throw away immediately, I couldn't come up with anything.

Now that's not to say Terry Strickland doesn't do good work. Or that State Farm is wrong in trying to market to me. (They're choosing the wrong medium and failing to understand their audience, but whatevs.) But when you don't deliver anything extra, my loyalty is nonexistent. Plus with GEICO, I feel like somebody's watching me...