GEICO Video Production Case Study
Improving digital storytelling and education with video
We all know that 15 minutes can save you 15 percent on car insurance. But when it comes to talking about GEICO’s products and processes, you can also do a lot with two minutes. One minute. Heck, even 30 or 15-seconds. That’s the power of video.
Demo Duck has partnered with GEICO to produce over 10 video series—50 videos in total—exploring different styles, different video formats—and perhaps most importantly, different goals. Primarily, these goals were to create content that educates customers on the-ins-and-outs of insurance policies, or create short-form digital content to further expand their marketing reach. The result has been videos that make messages memorable and fun, with over 2 million views on YouTube and over 5.6 million views on TikTok.
Explaining While Entertaining
GEICO needed videos to educate customers how policies and processes work, ideally helping save some calls to their customer service team. Our team was tasked with distilling this dense content down in a way that still matched their brand’s witty and approachable tone. But producing videos that both educate and entertain is a fine art—I mean, have you ever read a boat insurance policy? It’s not exactly a laugh riot.
In respect to GEICO’s iconic sense of humor, our priority first and foremost was to educate audiences on these different policies, products and processes. If we overindexed on jokes with our scripts, we’ll miss giving the viewers what they really needed. For each series, we allowed the design and motion to bring to life the GEICO energy, while the scripts remained relatively straightforward with a wink of humor. Each topic gave us a world of playful characters, colorful environments, creative visual aids and sight gags to explore. The results were videos that made the ins-and-outs of insurance policies sticky and fun.
Building a Digital Brand
Ok, we love explainer videos. They are our bread and butter. But we’re more than explainer videos too. And our work on the explainer videos helped show the GEICO team our versatility, and our different creative capabilities too. Clever concepts, smart scripts—we’re video production pros but we’re savvy marketers too. The GEICO team asked for our help in creating digital ads, primarily to run as 15-second pre-roll ads on YouTube. A big opportunity, but a small amount of time.
The key for these short digital commercial video spots is simplicity with the message. Each series focused on one key message, then allowing space to also play with GEICO’s accessible playful brand voice. Because brand building in this instance. Unlike the explainer videos—which need to deliver information—these videos were more about brand building as well. Our adventures into advertising even caught the eye of AdWeek and were featured in a profile.
Launching the GEICO TikTok
GEICO asked for our help to create videos for their new TikTok channel. When you start a new account on a new channel, you need to keep the quality content coming to feed the algorithmic beast, grow your follower base and keep your existing audience engaged. Oh, and the content has to be aligned with the sensibilities of the new platform too.
When we were developing concepts for these GEICO TikToks, we thought about aligning our video to some of the platform’s niche communities and their distinct video styles. This would allow our videos to connect with an audience, even if they didn’t align with a popular daily trend. We based one of our initial video series off the popular but niche world of packing videos, “oddly satisfying” flat lay style videos where users pack suitcases, packages and more. Not only did the “Types of Packers” series introduce the world to “Aunt Paula,” but it also won a Silver Telly Award for Series: Comedy.
Our GEICO TikTok work extended from there, in some delightfully silly directions. Our team had an opportunity to really have some DIY, scrappy shoots—occasionally even leveraging our internal team as talent. This also helped create videos that felt native to the platform, which at the end of the day is filled with friends and family having fun making different types of videos and not worrying about a professional sheen. These fast-turnaround shoots—oftentimes filming multiple videos in a day—allowed us to experiment with different types of content and learn from how past videos performed.
A Truly Cross-Department Collaboration
GEICO is a big company. And although we had some main client contacts, each series would often require working with a new department to help reach its specific goals. For example, someone who manages a specific product like Boat Insurance and needed help with an explainer. Or, GEICO’s social team who needed help launching the TikTok account. The fun videos were a chance to show our creative abilities, but the cross-department shifting was another opportunity to demonstrate our strong client service skills too. If another team or employee needs to join the party, we’ll educate them on the process and help them enjoy making an excellent video.
Some seriously fun videos. But also some seriously strong partnership too.
