ECUAdvertising

If the phrase “an embarrassment of riches” can be applied to any advertising campaign, it can certainly be applied to the long running series of GEICO TV commercials. In the past 15 years, GEICO has made the pedestrian line “Fifteen minutes could save you 15 percent or more on car insurance” memorable through a shrewd combination of good, old-fashioned sheer repetition and one of the most prolific and varied advertising efforts in living memory. They’ve made advertising icons out of a Gecko and modern-day, still-living-among-us Cavemen, along with a veritable cavalcade of odd characters, near-celebrities, and even other consumer products. Here’s a brief sampling of some of the best GEICO TV work of the past decade, and then some. This is a completely unscientific sampling. And no googly-eyed “Kash” spots either. Just sit back and enjoy.1. Self-Licking DogThis is the proverbial “oldie but goodie.” Just the right amount of “eww” and a harbinger of things to come.2. Squirrel Hi-FiveWe always knew there was a great squirrel conspiracy. We just had no idea it went this far.3. Mrs. Butterworth“Someone’s placed a logo right over my face!” Simply classic.4. The First Gecko SpotIf not for the Screen Actors Guild strike of 1999, we may have never seen the birth of this endearing character voiced here by none other than Kelsey Grammer.5. Airport CavemanTo this day, perhaps the most enduring spot of the Caveman series. Sold lots of singles for the band Röyksopp, too.6. Into the wall"Listen, go-kart track, grocery store, those remote-controlled boats; when it comes to Mike Wallace, the story ends with me putting him in the wall."7. Butta and JamIt was this one or “Free Pie and Chips.” In the end, the Gecko’s “That’s a complete dramatization, of course, but you get my point,” puts this one over the top.8. Caveman Therapy OneTalia Shire! Brilliant casting, and who doesn’t love “My mother’s calling; I’ll put it on speaker”?9. Trust ExerciseTwo words: “Oh, dear.”10. Charlie DanielsBest of the new Robert Stack “Unsolved Mysteries” Parodies. “That’s how you do it, son.”

To help decide which celebrity is the best choice for a film role or product endorsement, entertainment and marketing executives can tap into a host of numbers to gauge public figures' star power. So many, in fact, that the numbers leave a dizzying portrait of who's hot and who's not. At least four companies regularly track opinion on public figures in entertainment and sports. The venerable Q Score, in its fifth decade, surveys consumers once or twice a year by mail. Three newer competitors rely on the Web, enlisting panel participants to weigh in more regularly. The numbers are marketed to advertisers and casting directors to help them identify celebrities for product pitches or starring roles. But the various ratings sometimes show sharply different results.

Last July, 65% of respondents to an E-Poll Market Research poll who were aware of Mr. Woods said they liked him, or liked him a lot. That proportion dropped to 26% in their latest rating, earlier this month. Some 31% found the golfer insincere, while only 2% found him trustworthy (compared with 1% and 28%, respectively, for Tom Hanks in the most recent poll, last April).

Steven Levitt, president of Marketing Evaluations Inc., which produces Q Scores, responds that expecting people to fill out 46 attributes on 25 celebrities in one sitting, as E-Poll does, is unreasonable. His company's relatively simple rating—respondents can either indicate that they don't know a celebrity, or rate him or her on a scale of 1 to 5—allows him to ask respondents to rate 450 celebrities in one sitting, he says. But Q Scores are collected by mail, a time-consuming process that happens at most twice a year, unless a client makes a special request. As a result, the company's latest Woods numbers date from last summer, before he became gossip-page fodder. At the time the golfer had a positive Q score of 28—meaning he was named as a favorite by 28% of the 86% of respondents who recognized his name. His negative Q score—the percentage of those who knew him and rated him only fair or poor—was 19. These figures were little changed from six years earlier.

A campaign is under way in New York to promote a weeklong celebration of the Academy Awards — the film industry’s equivalent of New Year’s Eve in Times Square

The campaign is being sponsored by NYC & Company, the city’s official tourism, marketing and partnership organization, which is staging the week’s events in collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The goal is to stimulate interest in the 82nd annual presentation of the Academy Awards, scheduled for Sunday, with activities in New York carrying the theme “Oscar and the City.”

The public events, which start on Monday, include screenings of Oscar-winning films with New York themes as well as exhibits of Academy Awards and film posters. The week is to culminate with an “Oscar Night and the City” viewing party on Sunday, at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, where paying guests can watch the ABC broadcast of the show.