Tighten Your Laces

Until I can find a copy of the "Product Placement Within a Commercial" ad done by Geico in which they feature a guy proposing to his fiance with a Helzberg Diamond while the gecko and the John Slattery-looking guy look on, I'm going with this spot. In the words of one of the guys from AdGiants, "Brand management done so good it's like a shoe to the back of the head." Have to agree. Only 11 views so far? Damn. FIRST!



The spot was done by Barkley in Kansas City about 2003. Directed by Russ Hadley, written by Bob Cox, now of AdGiants. Said Cox,

"The original idea was that he would be a Buddhist Monk meditating outside a temple, like in Tibet, when he gets hit in the head with a tennis shoe. But... we had a very limited production budget and had to shoot locally. Since there are no Asian-themed locations or architecture in Kansas City (like none), I changed it to a farmer in the French countryside and shot it with a local director on a farm just south of KC. Hence the beret and primitive plow instead of a tractor. But because those references were "subtle", we didn't worry too much if people grasped the overseas locale, as long as they got that the shoe had flown a great distance."