Cannes Creative Showcase: GEICO figures out a hack to make viewers watch their full advertisement

Brand: GEICO

Agency: The Martin Agency Richmond

Brief

GEICO decided to do viewers a favour: fast-forward to the end of their own pre-roll ad. At the end of each :15 pre-roll, viewers could click to watch the full-length ad and see what they missed. The full-length ads featured more GEICO messaging and more exposure to the brand.

Execution

Their :15 pre-roll ads ran as paid media on YouTube. At the end of each :15 pre-roll, viewers could click to watch the full-length ad (also on YouTube) and see what they missed.

Outcome

After three weeks, the campaign had over half a million views. Most importantly, the extended versions have almost as many views as the paid :15 pre-rolls. With a 91.7% correlation between paid and unpaid views, which means 9 out of 10 paid views were converted into voluntarily watching the full-length ads.

MARKETING magazine is the Official Cannes Lions Festival Representative for Malaysia.