Characters, humour & disasters: how GEICO changed the insurance game

0:06Hello gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored CMO. Now, in this episode, we're going to be talking about Geico, one of the US's most famous insurance brands, and one that has used characters brilliantly to tell their story, as well as embracing humor. And I'm joined in this episode by the VP of Creative, Michelle Moscone, to tell me more about why humor matters and how they're using distinctive characters like the Geico Gecko to get their message across. Humor is very much back on the agenda, so I want to find out how to use it and how it can be an effective tool for marketers. Here it is. Michelle Mosconi.

0:39I'll try and get the Italian accent there for you. You did a wonderful, wonderful job. How was my Italian? Bravo. Bravissimo. Oh, bravissimo. Everything sounds good in Italian. It does. When I go to Italy, I just feel happy. I think just listening to the sound of people's voices. And that's part of our culture. We want to make you feel happy. We also want to make you, you know, gain a bunch of weight because we'll constantly be feeding you. There's pizza, pasta, there's great wine, and there's beautiful, romantic, you know, language. It's just magical. We like to enjoy ourselves. You do, don't you?

1:08So tell us how you ended up at Geico. Tell us a bit about your journey to Geico, you know, because you've been on a fascinating journey at this point. But tell us about it. I moved to New York about 20 years ago as a dancer. I've always had an interest in expressing myself and communicating with people in a more artistic way. Years here, injury, injury, injury. And, you know, then all of a sudden I needed a real job. You know, I needed insurance. I had to get something a little bit more predictable for my life and thought creativity, expression, discipline, probably a bit of masochism. Advertising was a perfect segue for me.

1:52So I started off answering phones at an ad agency at BBDO. And this was when admins were, we were proper assistants as you would, you know, as you know an assistant. We answered 15 phone lines. We could not leave the desk unless you had someone cover for you. You did the expense reports. You picked up the dry cleaning. You ordered the lunches. You did, you know, everything. And it was also the time in advertising where you didn't need to have gone to portfolio school. You didn't need to have a book, right? Those entry-level positions were your foot in the door of figuring out what you wanted to do in advertising, right?

2:32So as an assistant, I was able to take on briefs. I would do like literally anything anyone gave me. I did scratch VO for pitches. I took on briefs. I, you know, coordinated this, that and whatever. And then I started to realize my strongest skill set was maybe not necessarily making the work, but using my organizational skills to make the work happen. So I started tracking kind of where things were, you know, where people were. And as an assistant, people would walk up to you and say, hey, where's so-and-so? Oh, you know, he's on a shoot for this day. He's shooting for this. Oh, and then he's going to go into, then, you know, she's going to go into post-production.

3:06Then we're going to do all of this. So I started to realize, like, there's value in kind of organizing all of this information. And I remember starting what was kind of the infancy of project management. But, you know, on stateside, that wasn't really considered valuable yet. I know in the UK, you know, you all had valued project managers way, you know, early on. But it wasn't quite there yet in the States. And I remember putting together this presentation of, like, how PMs are going to do this, this, and this. And that was, like, immediately shot down. I was like, no, we don't need this. I was like, okay, well, I want to do more.

3:40I want to leverage this, like, skill set and this excitement that I have for putting the pieces together and seeing what picture it makes. So I went to a fragrance house called Cody and I kind of cut my teeth in project management. They were elevating traffic to project management. And I kind of learned like a larger, you know, I had a larger view to all of the bits and pieces. and after that I kind of missed which I don't know why but I think it's like something inside of us where we must be crazy but I missed the freneticness and just the craziness that happens on the agency side like I needed to like be in there so I went back to the agency side this time as a project manager I had a little bit more information under my belt and worked my way up in an operations role at Gray and spent about five years there.

4:32And what I realized being a project manager, because I know my career trajectory to where I am now, the VP of creative at Geico, I was a project manager, right? That's how I started off. But the wonderful thing about what project management taught me is that I got to see every single facet of the business, right? I got to see how the sausage was made and I got to be a part of making that. So instead of like a lot of disciplines, when you get more senior in your career, you go really deep in it. So you're in like the nitty gritty of all the knowledge, whereas in project management, a part of your career elevation is getting breath, is being involved in so many different more touch points.

5:16So, you know, even now when I run into people, they're like, but wait, what? You do that? I mean, it makes sense, but you were a project manager. It's like, yeah, I was a project manager. I was a really good one, too. And there are, you know, I've had this conversation with a few people. There are four things that really made me, which allowed me to do the job that I'm at now. Like, the first thing is I understand all the facets of the business because I've been exposed to it. And the second is I've had the benefit of being surrounded by some of the most brilliant minds. and not just in creative, but in strategy, in production, in like really everything.

5:56Three, I have taste. I mean, I like to think that I have taste. And the fourth one is I know how to get shit done. So like those things combined, I am surprised there are not more people like me in the position that I'm in. You are so right, actually. Often when I used to be a CMO on kind of client side, talking to my agency partners, they're often shocked at how little time I spent in the discipline of creative or advertising and how far how stretched I was across everything else and and you're absolutely right about project management because often in a brand side relationship you are the one coordinating all of the departments together so if you're launching new products you're combining with the factory the supply chain that you're doing the business case you know creating the positioning doing the advertising, booking the media.

6:45And I worked out, I remember chatting to, in fact, I worked with Gray actually in London. So yeah, we've got a connection there. Yeah, Gray London. Okay, maybe we cross paths because I did some like rotational like operations thing. Yeah, they were my partner agency for about three years. So great times, really good times. Did some really good stuff. But they were quite shocked to realize that I worked out, I spent about 5 % of my time would be with them. And all the other things are people, strategy, finance logistics supply chain you know it's um you know people think you spend all your time on brand side on the creative but actually the amount of operational things and your last point about get shit done i mean ultimately you're judged by does it happen right not by is it a good plan or is it a funny idea or whatever is it gonna you know is it gonna be executable so i can believe that your project management skills is is is absolutely where it'd be so you so when did the geico opportunity came up and uh because this is one of the most iconic kind of brands isn't it in in america and for anyone in the uk listening it's probably the equivalent of uh the meerkats would be our equivalent so um so they've got um well they're never i can't get the thing compare the market sorry compare the market is the url that's the name of the company okay they've got 50 of market share but their mascot are a bunch of russian uh sounding meerkats i mean that makes sense i can just see the connection already i mean obviously no yeah but it is it is completely the british equivalent of geico okay it's hilarious but very funny got a very unusual character very surprising and everyone talks about them sort of thing so it's the equivalent to that but when did the geico opportunity came up and uh how did it all happen for you uh so like we talked i have only been agency side right i'm an agency kid through and through and i had met damon our cmo when the agency I was at was pitching business that he was running, he knew that he was going to Geico and was going to make some big changes.

8:44He was looking to bring in people that had a different perspective, right? He and I connected and we had a couple conversations. And to be honest, I was pretty apprehensive about taking a client role. So like the first thing is coming from the agency side, what I learned is the clients, like that perception that you think the clients have it easy is absolutely ridiculous. It does not exist. The clients do not have it easy. But the two things, like there were two major factors that I considered in this, and it took me like a couple months to like actually decide to do this. The first thing was, okay, I know advertising like the back of my hand, but marketing is different.

9:23Advertising is one sliver of marketing. There is a whole piece of this pie in which my like my marketing literacy was somewhat limited because I hadn't been exposed to it. And you think that you know what it is, right? But until you're there, you don't. So I was really nervous about taking on something in which I was responsible for not only like transforming like the, you know, internal operations of a brand, but this brand, this brand that I admired for so long, right? No one was looking at Geico and being like they need to change their creative. This brand isn't, you know, isn't enjoyable. No, there were so many other things, you know, on the marketing end that needed a new perspective.

10:06And, you know, we often say, and other people say this too, like, don't think like a marketer. We are very smart marketers, but we give ourselves the freedom to not think like a marketer. So I didn't know how to think like a marketer because I never was one. And I was very fortunate that my partners that I work with, Kate, Carrie, Jared, they helped me kind of get up to speed on all of these other bits and pieces that I didn't know about. But also, I remember, they don't know my world either. So there's gaps in knowledge across everyone. And that's good because you then become incredibly reliant on your partners to teach you what may not be your expertise.

10:49And the second thing that I considered was, it's Geico. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? The chance to be at Geico? I mean, this is a brand that I have admired as just a viewer before I even got into any type of advertising or marketing. And then as someone who worked in advertising, and then as a marketer, I consider myself really, really lucky. I deserve to be here, but I'm also really, really lucky geico's amazing are you kidding me yes of course signed it let's do it what what is it about the insurance category that you know what why are there so many characters because obviously the gecko is so synonymous with geico obviously and and the wordplay is quite clever and the characters are but that you know not the only one like jake from state farm or there's many many others aren't there so what is it about this category because you don't see this in other categories.

11:41You see some examples, but insurance is particularly full of these really interesting, funny characters. Do you have any ideas as to why it works particularly well? I think we have to answer that. We might have to rewind a little bit to look at where the category was before Geico changed it. So 30 years ago, the insurance category basically had two things. It was either fear-mongering, so they were showing these really horrific situations and they were like predicating upon your fear to have an interest in what they were saying. Or their ads were just like RTB soup, right? So you have one, you know, category theme that is preying upon your fears.

12:27And then you have another one that is spitting out information as if it were reading a owner's manual for a blender, right? What doesn't build trust, right, is being afraid or being bored and not interested so none of the the work resonates right so that's what was happening and then 30 years ago or so um yeah exactly 30 years ago we began our partnership with the martin agency right and we knew we had to we had to break free kind of from what everyone else was doing in the category so we tried out something different humor right and it wasn't an immediate like we're gonna do humor we have all the the testing everything that says humor works Now, we were like smart enough to try something that no one else had done.

13:10And we started to create ads, like just content that allowed us to talk about our products and our services in a way that was memorable for people. Right. So you could be saying all of the right things in the right places at the right time. But if no one's listening, it doesn't matter. And if you're boring them, they're not going to make that connection and remember things. So coming out of that really strong voice and brand that we're building, a really great way to talk about your brand is having vehicles like characters that can be the voice of your brand, right? We have multiple different characters, as you know.

13:58We've gone through a whole roster of them. And one in particular, the gecko that has really stood the test of time, has been with us for 30 years. But even the gecko starting off was not the gecko that you know of today. The gecko at first, I don't know if anyone remembers this, but the first original ad, we call him the podium gecko, it was brought on as a play on words of gecko versus gecko, where everyone was kind of flocking toward this gecko, assuming that it was gecko. And the gecko was like, I'm not gecko, I'm a gecko, not gecko. Terrible accent, sorry about that for everyone listening or watching.

14:35And then we started to realize that the gecko became a really powerful piece of brand equity. Right. The gecko became one of our vehicles for our voice, for our brand voice, but not limited to that. We have a lot of character driven work, which helps make that connection. Right. You are humanizing the work through an anthropomorphic gecko, but you're able to talk to different people and create these like really lovable and sometimes even like non-lovable characters. But but they make a connection. Characters are almost a shortcut to your brand. Right. And to your message. totally i think i mean characters we've been studying characters system one for many many years and in my colleague orlando looked at number of award-winning case studies that included a character and it's declined from i think it's something like 20 25 years ago 40 of award-winning campaigns would have a character today it's 15 so it's very interesting so so this is what i find fascinating about this conversation is that geico is such a powerful example and yes it's very unfashionable.

15:37And another good example, which makes me smile, is we test every Super Bowl ad every year to see how the general public respond to it and which emotion it creates. And of course, Super Bowl is synonymous with celebrities, right? So we thought, let's see the average star rating of an ad with a celebrity versus an ad without a celebrity. Now, the average performance is 2.7 stars out of five, right? So you look at all, that's the average. With a celebrity in, it's also 2.7 there's no uplift for a celebrity however for a character 3.7 so and if you think about a character as well with a celebrity if you've got snoop or you got serena williams or whatever everyone else has got them in in the ad and the character's famous for being them right they're not not associated with your brand the amazing thing with geico or characters is that they're synonymous particularly when the name sounds the same you know like compare the little cats or geico they're ours right they're yours yeah they're ours they're not and there's no out across the board.

16:32No royalty payments either. Well, I mean, there are two, you know, the gecko doesn't come out of thin air. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And this is, I think, one of the biggest lessons for marketers, I think, no one seems to realise is the role characters can play in creating association with your brand. The other thing, another British example is we have this Churchill the dog, right? And it's this very cute British bulldog. It's a very British kind of like breed of a dog, right? But he's a funny dog and he sort of goes like this sort of thing. I'm sorry, can you do that again for everyone? For everyone, it's like, oh yes.

17:09People will be phoning in going, Jordan didn't get it quite right. And we'll have this big thing going down, but it's like, oh yes. And in fact, they even used to give away the Churchill dogs and they would be on the back of, you know, the parcel shelf on the back of the car. And I remember when I was much younger We were being stuck in the jam on the motorway and you'd see this and they put the dog on this spring so it'd nod at you and almost replicate the nodding dog. Yeah, the motion as the car went up and down, the dog went on to you. But it's an incredibly potent way of kind of connecting.

17:42The other thing we found as well, looking at the work we did with Churchill, is that it connects every bit of your media together. So people would see the TV ad, but then they'd be online and they'd see Churchill the dog. And then when you're searching through comparison sites, looking at different insurance premiums, the dog would be there as well. And I remember recently getting some, renewing some insurance. And I didn't know who the first few brands were, even though they were cheap. I'm like, oh, I've never heard of them. They're going to be around in a year's time. But then I got to church.

18:10I'm like, ah, yes. So I paid more. And apparently I was talking to them about it. And there is a premium for familiarity of your insurance company. It actually makes you more money because people feel reassured. They'd rather go for slightly more. It's not massively, but 10 % of them. They'd rather pay more for a brand they recognize. And the dog was creating the recognition. So I think that's what you do. It's the trust that comes out of that, right? It is, isn't it? So like Geico has spent so many years building its brand, right? And the characters are a very powerful part of our brand. And the recognition, the easy recognition that comes with them.

18:46in that half a second when you recognize the character all of a sudden like all of those other brand benefits that you know of that brand of the customer service of the trust the loyalty what they offer all of that hits you like that it does so much heavy lifting you know this little you know six six inches six point nine inches you know gecko is able to do a lot of heavy lifting in that and to your point about like you know connecting all of these campaigns and like ecosystems together, the gecko and our other character characters can work in so many different places without everything having to be matching luggage.

19:22But, you know, we're all going to the same place. Exactly. Exactly that. Yeah. And I think the other thing that's changed, if I go back, say, 30 years, kind of pre-internet, when I used to buy insurances, you know, when I started driving for the first time, I'd walk into town and I'd go to a broker and I'd sit down with somebody and they'd tell me all my options and i used to buy insurance from a shop it would really be a physically place a physical place where you go and buy insurance right but with the internet you can buy insurance from anywhere so what you so now what you have to do is you have to get in people's minds so that when they're searching for insurance you come to mind and you create the trust so in a way it's a very pure marketing category isn't it because it's a very level playing field in you know you know there's only one place you can buy insurance you're kind of online you're not going to go into the store or someone's not going to turn up to your house you know so in a way insurance is or sorry um online is a very uh convenient way of doing that we you know still have many different ways of of contacting you know agents and getting policies here but you're absolutely right being able to have the convenience of getting it online like your your journey your customer journey is very different than it used to be exactly the exact customer journey so you need to be kind of you need to have share of people's minds is a lot more important than it used to be where before the battle was getting on the broker's list right because everyone would have a broker right and that was the battle being there being available now the challenge is being in people's minds so when they search for you or ask for look for insurance then then you're going to come up and the research that goes into in insurance now too is that's a different customer journey right because you have the internet you have so many different ways of learning about a brand and what they offer and our advertisements are like it It is education.

21:04You know, insurance can be very, very complicated. We don't ever want people to feel or be in a position where they don't feel that they are making an informed decision. So we can inform you, you know, through our entertaining ads. And I like to think about that. You didn't even know that you just watched an ad. You were just like delighted for a little bit. And we snuck in a few RTBs because, you know, they happen to be part of the story of Geico. The thing I find about insurance as well is that it's an entertaining category. You can buy it very, very quickly. It is now. It is now. It is now.

21:42But when it goes wrong, it's a whole different game, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, we were chatting earlier and I was telling you about the four years ago, my house burned down. I had a house fire. I'm still just like shocked by how this happened, but please continue. Well, it's one of those things that people would joke about, oh, my house burned down or whatever. Yeah, right. No, mine didn't. It actually did. And it was also on Christmas Day. It was just to make it worse. It's just like, you know, it's getting better and better. Did the dog die? What happened? I know. So, you know, we're having, well, in fact, there's one, I love cooking on Christmas, right?

22:14And it's just like my favorite Christmas Day. Tradition is I do a fillet of steak and I was cooking the whole thing. And yeah, I don't like turkey. So in the UK, everyone has turkey. I don't like turkey. So we have like fillet of steak just because it's about the same price. It's like turkey prices are insane at Christmas, but you can then buy the best possible fillet for the same price. But you don't even make like a turkey just for the rest of the guests? No, no, no, no. If you come to our house, it's going to be it's going to be fillet. Steak and that is it. That's right. That's the thing, right?

22:43I'll remember that when I get my invite. Indeed. Yeah. You don't get turkey disappointment when you come around. Anyway, I just I just finished cooking and every year I always set the fire alarm off. Right. Because there's loads of smoke and it's like chaos in the kitchen. anyway and um so the fire alarm went off and we're all sat around we're all sat in the sat around the dining table and um my wife goes to the door i said i'll turn you know turn the smoke so she goes the door she opens the door and she screams her head off and says the house is on fire and i literally i was getting the the potatoes out the oven and i dropped them in shock i'm like and i thought she was joking because i thought it was like a joke at my expense as in ha ha ha you've just so you know the house on fire and i look around and literally flames are coming out the the lounge going up the stairs across all the ceiling and within seconds the whole place is yeah yeah it's like yeah because with modern houses i didn't realize this that fire within so the phone the fire brigade the fire brigade were there in six minutes so it was 10 minutes from the fire starting to the whole house being out of control as in like smoke coming out of every room unstoppable everyone is okay though just just because the the scare i'm sharing a bit more than i plan to here but the scary thing i'm interviewing you this is getting uncensored um the scary thing was is that uh i shouted to everyone to get out the back door which was the nearest door the door was locked and it had no key so for a few seconds i had the what i can only describe as i think i'm going to die feeling i think i think this is it kind of feeling and i I have a heart rate going up right now.

24:24Yeah, I tried. And also the thing people don't realise about these situations is it's chaotic. There's noise, there's smoke, there's panic. And you don't think straight at all. So I would try to run to the front of the house where the front door was. That's where the fire was coming from. So I was trying to do the hero thing of like, I must find the keys. Fortunately, my daughter found the keys and got everyone out. But for a few seconds before we found the keys, I tell you what, it was just like, this is it. It must have felt like an eternity. Yeah, everything goes into slow motion. And it was crazy.

24:56And then I remember jumping out the front window with only my, like, I was wearing t-shirt jeans and my slippers, right? That's all I had. This is Christmas, it's really cold, right? And because you just do, you know, just like, get out. fire brigade were amazing i mean they were there in uh six minutes from cool two fire engines six minutes later and they were in there putting the fire out and and they did an amazing job but the thing that oh man the thing that struck me was apart from the disbelief was when the chief fire brigade came out and um he said he looked me in the eye and he said i need to tell you something you're homeless and he said if you can't find a place to stay tonight i have to phone the red cross and you're going to be going to the red cross basically homeless shelter and because because in my head i'm going it's christmas but it's christmas that's my house can't i go back in he said i cannot let you back in that house you know it's it's also a crime scene this one no one tells you it's all because um a lot of arson happens a lot of people set their houses on fire to to claim insurance right so i didn't even know this so we had um the fire brigade investigator we had a police investigator and we had insurance invest we had three crime scene investigators proper csi turn up in all the uniform and you know i got interviewed and as well that i got interviewed and i didn't even think that i could have caused it or anything but but suddenly when you're being interviewed you feel guilty they were like did you have any candles and we had candles up and were the candles next to anything that could catch light i'm sure you experience a couple different emotions like i'm being accused of something so heinous as burning down my i know on christmas for the insurance money but also you're you are probably feeling all this immense guilt of did i do this did i not do that is my brain thinking straight i know and and and even downs the fact that um we we'd we'd bought uh different family members there were 10 of us the different parts family had come and we bought them all these hampers and these are wicker baskets full of straw and they had oil in them and basically massively flammable so what we think happened i mean the investigation concluded that a candle had fallen off the mantelpiece and had landed on basically all these hampers lit the hampers the hampers had lit the christmas tree the christmas tree had lit the sofa the sofa had lit the room the room had lit the house it was kind of like this this this bonfire thing when they were investigating there was this trail of oil going all across the room and it looked like it was intention it looked like you might have intentionally lit and and set the whole thing up so they were going well can you explain why there's that trail of oil going from there to there so so i was like suddenly like am i going to get investigated what's happening do i have insurance are they going to cover me what's going on i'm homeless i'm getting homeless i mean i'm in the motel down the road exactly i've got no clothes I had to go shopping the next day and I just had the clothes.

27:48We just had the clothes, all had the clothes we're wearing. And then, but here's where it comes to insurance. So two weeks later, I got a call from the insurance company and they said, Mr. Evans, just to let you know you're not insured. I'm like, hang on a second. I've had the same policy for 16 years. We bought the house 16 years ago and it was bought from the plot. So we bought it when it was built. And back then you had to, you had legally, you had to have insurance to go with the mortgage, right? And they were tied together. So, but I hadn't checked my policy for 16 years. I just like took it out.

28:21It's fine. I'm sure it's going to be great. And they said, you haven't insured the house for the right number of bedrooms. I'm like, that cannot be possible. I've been with you since the beginning. And you didn't change the house? No, I mean, we converted a room. So I then thought, oh yeah, I had actually converted a room. I thought, oh dear. Anyway, would that be it? But I said, no, no, they said I'd insured for three and it should have been four and the house was four bedrooms and I bought it. But I've got no record of the insurance because it had all burnt, right? So I couldn't just get the documents out.

28:48I'd go, no, no, you're wrong. So I then phoned up the archives department. That is really smart to me. I'm going to phone up the archives department. Dear archives of nationwide insurance. I took the policy out and did a sort of thing. Can you just tell me how many bedrooms were under policy back then? Just asking for a friend. Yeah, exactly. innocently you know sort of whoever it was she's very kind she said no it says four bedrooms i couldn't you send me a photo of that little document there you know and then the next thing i did is i phoned the broker and said oh you know when i last asked you to update my insurance can you take a photo of the screen where you input the details that i give you right took a photo four bedrooms the last bit was the best bit though i phoned up and i pretended to be a new customer i said oh can you give me a premium quote for this particular house on this particular the street and it matched precisely the amount i've been paying so i wrote them a letter to say a like your archives say four b like my broker says four c i've been paying for four bedrooms sort of thing anyway didn't hear anything for like a few weeks as well because and then i got calls from more and more important people in the insurance company eventually i mean you you had the receipts right yeah yeah yeah i know but even but when you're up against a big insurance company's legal team you know you think like you know that they just said you know we're not going to insure you and i'm thinking well what if they fight me in court i haven't got the money to pay court battles and eventually i got a phone call saying we're so sorry we've made a mistake we inputted 10 years ago we updated our computer systems and we we put the wrong number of bedrooms in i'm like oh my god but like so i am now the biggest advocate for having good insurance and checking the detail, you know, like making sure you know.

30:31I mean, that completely, like, first of all, thank goodness that everyone was okay. Yes. You know, I'm sorry that you went through all of that. I mean, that's quite like a traumatic experience compounded with, you know, when it happened and kind of like the state of desperation and like emptiness. It left you like physically, like you didn't have a place to stay and family and all of that. So I'm happy that things ended up okay. But that is a very, you know, probably not typical story, but a hyper like... real, but hyper exaggerated version of like what happens every day with our customers. So our brand is very, you know, we use comedy to kind of set the stage for like people to absorb and recall what we're saying.

31:13But when you are actually interacting with our brand, when you need our brand, because you do need insurance, it's not like nice to have, you absolutely need this. you are not calling your claims agent laughing our ads might make you laugh but you're not calling the claims agent like my house just burned down how many rooms did i have no so like when when we talk about advertising and obviously i'm like biased with like creative and everything like driving this i'm not absent of understanding it is more than just having a really strong and powerful brand right you have to have the the services and you know the the the products uh and all of that to to work together and you know one of our a strong value prop for for us too is our customer service we have 97 customer satisfaction right that is like insane right But that really matters.

32:10Yeah. Right. It's not just about making a funny ad. Funny helps us like resonate and helps us like kind of like break through some of the other clutter that can be out there. But we never use humor to trivialize these very real situations that you are having. So our brand is matched by our, you know, quality of service and products to you. You can't have any of those things with like they have to work together. Well, let's talk about humor because you do some of the funniest work out there and you were in Cannes this year as well, weren't you? I was. Actually talking about humor on a panel. First time as well, Geico's been out at Cannes, which is kind of a bit of breaking news.

32:50It is very new for us. We've typically kind of shied away from a lot of these media opportunities. It just hasn't been kind of something that we've focused on, you know, part of this, you know, expanding our internal and external marketing universe. is doing panels in this podcast. Breaking News, the first podcast for Geico. Lucky both of us. It's my first podcast and yours with Geico. Yeah, we went to Cannes, did a couple panels. It was really, really exciting. And one of the conversations, a big conversation topic was humor. I think we talked earlier, this was the first time that Cannes, surprisingly, for all these years, had a category for humor.