Geico Caveman Ads

In Rob Walker’s latest column, he explains how those posh cavemen in the Geico commercials have crept their way into pop-culture and expands upon the possibility of ABC picking up on the spots and turning them in to a sitcom.

The recent news that ABC was willing to entertain the possibility of a sitcom starring the Geico cavemen seemed a sort of watershed. Here were characters dreamed up as part of an advertising campaign, potentially crossing over into a venerable form of mainstream, pop-culture entertainment. While that sounds momentous, it misses a larger point. As characters in a successful advertising campaign, the cavemen are already part of mainstream pop culture. More so, in fact, than the characters in most current sitcoms.

If a caveman sitcom materializes, its great challenge will be figuring out how to make an already-popular concept work in such a staid, predictable context. After all, pretty much every late-night monologuist and morning-show host has riffed on Geico advertising; what new sitcom in the past five years has achieved such status as a universally understood reference point? But it’s not hard to see why ABC would be willing to give Martin Agency writers a shot at it. Finding an audience willing to accept advertising characters as entertainment is hardly a hurdle; clearly, an audience has already accepted, and embraced, the cavemen.

Rob Walker’s Consumed: Pop-Culture Evolution