Inspired by the fact that just about every pre-roll ad (the ad you skip almost every time you watch a popular clip on YouTube) is avoided by consumers, GEICO and their ad agency (The Martin Agency) turned to an awesomely “bad dog” to make a genius piece of advertising that is almost impossible not to watch. The first five seconds of all preroll advertising is unskippable, and the genius part of this work begins when the dog arrives a few seconds in.
All joking aside, there are valuable dog training lessons in this.
1) An essential part of dog training is dog management. As we often say, “What is reinforced is repeated, and each time a dog gets away with doing something, that behavior is reinforced.” Basically, if you don’t want your dog jumping on the kitchen table during dinner, stop the behavior before it happens. Putting the dog in its kennel or training it to stay in a place is key here.
2) If you don’t have a crate or haven’t yet trained your dog to stay, be ready to redirect your dog from unwanted behaviors. Unless you’re in a GEICO ad, and life is paused while the dog eats your dinner, it is entirely up to you to show the dog the right thing to do when they make such a mistake. Replacing unwanted behaviors with desirable ones is paramount to long-term dog training success.
3) Environmental stability is important in raising a confident dog. Despite his “poor manners,” we admire this dog’s comfort with jumping up on the table and casually walking across various surfaces without a care in the world. We also like this dog’s general demeanor. It is clearly well-cared for and has no reason to fear people. Such confidence is something to strive for.
Well done, GEICO and The Martin Agency. A more complete story of the campaign can be found here.