We took a typical pre-roll ad and “condensed” it. Literally. Each set was custom-built to the exact 16:9 dimensions of YouTube video player, then crushed down to nothing so you didn’t have to keep watching it. We like to call them the world’s first self-destructing pre-roll ads.

These :15 pre-roll ads ran as paid media on streaming video sites such as YouTube.

Over 20 million views for the campaign, contributing to industry-leading, record growth for GEICO. This campaign put the GEICO message in front of countless new customers and flipped the idea of “pre-roll” ads on its head—from something worth ignoring, to something so entertaining you’d actually watch it again.

Our target audience was YouTube viewers. We knew that this audience finds pre-roll ads annoying, so they “tune them out.” Our strategy was to create videos so disruptive and compelling that people couldn’t help but pay attention, remember the branding and who knows…maybe even watch them again.

Our task was keeping people from hating an ad they can’t skip. Our goal was to make a breakthrough pre-roll video that would not only get people’s attention, but actually get them to feel good about GEICO while still hammering home our branding and core “savings” message.