Progressive Insurance: Pop Culture?

My family and friends are now used to it. If you hang around me enough, you'll get used to it too. I'm always discussing advertisements. Something will come up in the car, while watching TV, even in random conversations. I go off into "ad rants" and explain to everyone around me in which way the advertisement works and why the agency chose to present the ad the way they did. Better yet, if I really, really get into an ad, I'll go out of my way to tell people about it or bring it up in conversation.For some time now I've been raving about the Progressive Insurance commercial "episodes" (as I like to call them.) The clean, white store juxtaposed with Flo's fun, enthusiastic personality is entertaining. I look forward to Flo's quirky reaction towards the people who come into the progressive.com store. With her "tricked out name tag," her "I ♥ insurance" pin, crisp white apron and super sweet lipstick color that matches her nails, she's the girl everyone wants to befriend. And I'm not alone. When I told my sister I wanted to write my first blog on the Progressive Insurance commercials her reaction was: "Oh! I love those! You should also write on the Apple commercials, I really like those too." 

Now, the fact that she paired Progressive Insurance and Apple in the same sentence says a lot.  Apple is possibly the most popular brand of our day, but to be paired with Progressive Insurance? That says a lot about the brand.

After hearing her reply I started my blog research and I came across an article written on Sept. 7, 2009, titled Progressive Corp.'s Flo takes on Geico's gecko in pitch for insurance customers written by Shaheen Samavati. The article has quotes from members of Progressive's advertising agency, Arnold Worldwide, as well as brand statistics and insight on Flo and Stephanie Courtney as a spokeswoman . But, one thing that caught my eye was the reference to Facebook followers, fan pages and message boards, with quotes by members on the campaign team. One quote by the account director, Trevor Nardini stated that "[Flo] has broached the territory of becoming popular culture." So I thought, "Really? Popular culture? I wouldn't go that far..."

Popular culture as defined on Dictionary.com is :  

"noun: contemporary lifestyle and items that are well known and generally accepted, cultural patterns that are widespread within a population; also called pop culture."  

Now, I'm not sure I agree that Flo has even come close to "broaching" pop culture but it is true that people are having fun with the commercials and her character. On Facebook.com, searching on "Progressive Flo" (the Google search the article used) came up with three page results and 89 group results "Just for Fun." Flo even has two MySpace pages, one company made with 242 friends and one fan made with 42 friends- but hey, that's one more MySpace page than I have. She even has a Wikipedia entry as well as many YouTube videos. That's pretty good. But as for "broaching" pop culture, I'm still not convinced. But, Flo as a pop culture icon or not, is pretty awesome and she gets the job done- according to the article she helped raise brand recognition 17% in 2008.

All this aside, before I sign off for the night, I just want to give a shout out for Progressive's literary reference to Moby Dick in their "Ahab" commercial. "Ahab" is not only my favorite of the many "Flo episodes" but Moby Dick is one of the greatest literary novels of all time and I think it's great they play around with it. Plus, I think it's great to teach those that have not read the novel that Moby Dick is the name of the whale, not the captain, as so many people confuse (at one point I was confused too, I admit.) So now, you too can have more money to buy an electronic fish finder by switching to Progressive Insurace! "Saving you money on boat insurance. Now that's Progressive."

Till next time,

The New Ad Grad