attorneybutler.net

GREAT INSURANCE COMPANY ADS 12-PRUDENTIAL LIFE ORPHAN ASYLUM

Now this is tasteful.  A Prudential Life Insurance Company print ad shows a young waif in an orphan asylum.  Several other orphans are shown, some looking out the gates of the asylum and one apparently engaging in that favorite amusement of orphans, pushing a ball of paper around with a stick.

I presume the nice lady bending down has asked the child why he is there, to which he replies:  "They said father didn't keep his life insurance paid up." Yipe.

Now if this isn't enough to get you to contact your insurance person to check into the many wonderful products:  Term Life, Whole Life, Universal Life, Universal Whole Life, Whole Universal Term Life, Annuities, Credit Default Swaps, Lottery Ticket Mutual Funds to protect your children from this certain fate, I don't know what will.

The American advertising industry can only do so much to instruct the public.

 

 

GREAT INSURANCE COMPANY ADS 11-DELTA LLOYD INSURANCE

Delta Lloyd is an actual Dutch Insurance Company.  However, even I, genius though I am fail to "get" some of their ads.

This first one, maybe.  The guys in the car probably need insurance.  By the way I don't know if that is the point made in the Dutch captions.

However, this next one leaves me totally in the dark. Why this guy with the phrase "Zero Tolerance" on a strip of label-maker tape on his helmet, riding a pony at some rioters to the theme of the old (very old) TV series Ivanhoe, helps sell insurance, is beyond me. And, I don't think this is because the ad exhibits a level of European sophistication I do not possess.

GREAT INSURANCE COMPANY ADS-10

Some of the ads I come across in this category appear so bad, that I have to do some research to see if the companies really exist.  In the case of Vern Fonk and Lincoln-yes; in the case of Great Bridge-no.  Actually Great Bridge is the only put-on in this category.

Pacific Way Insurance Company does exist, though I am not so sure I would like to be one of its policyholders.  As the ads show, the company seems to have an inherent distrust of all claimants.  And if you are a person with a damaged home, or someone who needs treatment after an auto accident, you might like to have the company to which you paid your premium dollars, look at you as a customer first and not as andidiots, felons or psychopaths, at best, or  scam artists (as usual).

GREAT INSURANCE COMPANY ADS-9

Welcome to 2010 and welcome back to an old category that hasn't seen a post in two months.

Today's entry in the annals of Great Insurance Company Ads comes from Vern Fonk Insurance.  The name was so weird that I had to look it up to make sure this wasn't a put-on.The Vern Fonk Insurance does, in fact, exist, and I assume it believes the ads bring in customers, or it wouldn't have continued to produce them.

I will present two.  The first "Pulled Over" includes the "Honk for Fonk" slogan featured in many commercials.  It is supremely bad taste, including hilarious footage of a police officer beating a  handcuffed speeding suspect, while his partner frisks the suspects wife (various "Oo's" can be heard from the wife if you listen closely). 

The second "Dance" features the word Shipoopi used in many Fonk commercials.  It is used as an interjection of some sort.  The only other time I have heard the word used was in a song by that name from the Meredith Willson musical, The Music Man.  As used in the song, the word be a baby-talk name for one's sweetheart.  How that fits into the insurance business is beyond me.  But, I never have been able to understand the subtleties of that industry.

One final thing.  Both commercials refer to the internet as the intermat, interbank or something.  I am sure Vern Fonk's customers know what that means and think it is funny.  I am sure they are as comical at the agency when a claimant wants some benefits paid on one of his policies.

Vern Fonk customer:  "I just had an accident and I need a insurance claim number before they'll treat me at the hospital."

Vern Fonk agent:  "SHIPOOPI!"

 

 

GREAT INSURANCE COMPANY ADS 8-WISH IT WERE REAL

This ad had everything.  Dubious taste.  Enhanced sound effects to emphasize the severity of the accidents.  Allegedly a marketing tool for an insurance company, promising coverage under circumstances that, in Michigan, would have produced a claim rejection letter so fast your head would swim.  And Carmina Burana, one of my favorite classical choral works as background music.  But, alas, my research leads me to conclude that there is no "Great Bridge" Insurance company.  Just a clever satiric piece.  Pity.  Funny, and fun none the less.

 

GREAT INSURANCE COMPANY ADS 7

I skipped the consecutive numbering for a while but our latest edition is lucky number 7.

Lincoln Insurance commercials are uniformly cheesy.  There are a half dozen or so of them available for viewing on the Web.  They are tasteless, sexist, racially lacking in sensitivity and on and on.  This guy thinks the novelty glasses with the ping-pong ball eyes on springs are hilarious.  They are featured in every commercial. 

It is interesting that both the Lincoln commercials and the Eagle Insurance commercials come from Illinois.  the insurance system there must be a real laugh riot. 

O TEMPORA, O SOPHO-MORES

Even setting aside the AIG corporate greed, government bail-out, trial lawyers as terrrorist rhetoric of former CEO Hank Greenberg, I have always found the AIG ads featuring little kids spewing complex financial terminology to be, well, irksome. For instance:

Not content to be "irked", Jimmy Kimmel updated the ad campaign to conform to current conditions. Sophomoric-perhaps. Not up to the usual Noel Coward-like humor standards of this site--probably. Funny?--Unquestionably.

GREAT INSURANCE COMPANY ADS-WE HAVE A WINNER

I know what the tort-reform, Chamber of Commerce, pro-Insurance, anti-trial lawyer, anti-frivolous(all) lawsuit,  small government(except for corporate bailouts), decreased government spending(except for corporate bailouts) people think about lawyer's ads, cheesy and otherwise.  I assume part of the reason, is that such groups hold themselves to a higher standard.  Well this ad, out of Illinois, cuts the legs, or should I say talons, out from underneath that argument.  This ad is so awesome, I don't know that anything else can ever come close.  I may have to retire the category altogether.  But, before I would consider doing that, I will run the Eaglewoman ad, which is a part of the same series.

Here it is.  WOW.

 

GREAT INSURANCE COMPANY ADS

This one is a little different, with that very restrained huckster, Billy Mays, hawking health insurance.

You can tell Billy really believes in this product, as he is not shouting as loud as he does in most of his infomercials. The man exudes credibility, as shown in this spot for Kaboom (and no, it is not a commercial for AIG).

What better man to sell health insurance than a man that can shout about the virtues of a bathroom tile cleaner. Apologize for the terse post, but it is Wings-Pens, Game 1 night.

GREAT INSURANCE COMPANY ADS-3

Another in the AIG sub-category.  Heavy irony again.  However, I must add that I find the child actor in this one mildly unnerving.  Bad actor to be sure.  It is indeed hard, as a child, to credibly rattle off all that financial jargon when the AIG board of directors, CEOs and other company "experts" had no idea what they were talking about, either.  The kid also looks like a bit of a pain.  I bet he got his lunch money stolen a lot.   

Hope the kid's parents stored some of the family's assets in that matress on which they were trying to sleep.