This is one of the spots in that ad campaign about the dog who is paranoid of losing its bone. These ads always seemed pretty dumb to me, since it’s just patently silly, this idea of an insurance company insuring a dog’s bone. How does the dog pay them, with leg-humpings? That’s prostitution! But anyway, it’s a cute idea, but there was always something missing for me in the whole concept. (Not that it wasn’t clever and cute, though!) There is something missing no longer, however, with the release of this spot about the “Cat Burglar”!
This is just wonderful and charming, having the dog worried about losing its bone because of a “cat burglar”, which is a cat with a burglar mask on, sneaking around the neighborhood. It’s just so cute, using that classic cat vs. dog motif, for something like insurance, with the dog worrying about being robbed until it gets its bone insured. How can anybody resist an ad like this? Until they overplay it to the point that we feel we’re being bashed over the head with it, this spot is seriously fun! I don’t know if it will sell much insurance for them (maybe some new dog accounts?), but at least it’s cute.
But they don’t show us what would happen if the dog actually lost its bone, which is the only reason why it might get an insurance policy to being with, right? So I could see this dog barking at a Travelers agent, and having them not understand it, or say that it probably buried the bone and forgot about it, or even worse, that the bone was lost under circumstances not covered by the insurance policy’s fine print, which the dog didn’t understand to begin with, because it’s a dog, and it can’t read. So again, we’ve got someone victimized by a brutal, uncaring insurance industry! But in this case, denying the claim may get them bitten in the ass: literally!
Here’s the canine-comforting commercial:
