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The Government Employees Insurance Company, usually known by the acronym GEICO, is an American auto insurance company. GEICO is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway and, as of 2007, provided coverage for more than 10 million motor cars, trucks and other motor vehicles owned by more than 8 million policy holders. GEICO writes private passenger automobile insurance in the District of Columbia and in all U.S. states except Massachusetts. The company is notable for its television advertising, with several prominent campaigns running simultaneously in national markets.
GEICO was founded in 1936 by Leo Goodwin and his wife Lillian Goodwin to provide auto insurance directly to federal government employees and their families [2]. In the 1970s, GEICO began to insure the general public, after real-time access to computerized driving records became available in the 1970s throughout the United States. In 1996, GEICO became a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.
GEICO generally deals directly with consumers via telephone and Internet, freeing up capital that would otherwise be spent on employing insurance agents in the field and making the company the nation's largest direct writer of private auto insurance.[3] GEICO does market their products through a small number of field agents, most of whom are based near military bases[4]; more recently, GEICO has begun opening offices in locations other than near military bases. These agents are known as GFRs (GEICO Field Representatives).
The company's ads sometimes focus on its reptilian mascot, the GEICO gecko, a talking Day Gecko created by The Martin Agency and most recently a CGI creature generated by Framestore CFC. The gecko first appeared in 1999 during the Screen Actors Guild strike that prevented the use of live actors. In the original commercial, where the gecko pleads for people to stop calling him in error, mistaking gecko for geico, he was voiced by Kelsey Grammer. In the subsequent commercials, the gecko speaks with a Cockney accent, because it would be unexpected, according to Martin Agency's Steve Bassett. Jake Wood, a British actor and comedian, is the current voice of the GEICO gecko. In current commercials the gecko's accent is more working-class, perhaps in an effort to further "humanize" him. "As computer animation got better and as we got to know the character better, we did a few things," says Steve Bassett, creative director at The Martin Agency. "We wanted to make him a little more guy-next-door. And he looks a lot more real than he's looked before." |
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