I took this company’s ads to task back in 2011 because they were sending some pretty bad unintentional messages, but I really like this one. Why’s that? Well, it’s basically because I’ve seen each and every one of these things happen in real life (someone driving into their garage with a bike strapped onto the roof of their car, someone stepping through a rotten floorboard in the attic and their foot sticking through the ceiling in the room beneath, a parked car being crushed between two trucks unbeknownst to the truck driver {or maybe purposefully?}, etc.), so it’s whimsical to recollect these events, as remembering such things is usually funny, even if it’s panic time while they’re actually occurring. And so seeing such things in an ad for insurance is quite the winning strategy.
The only problem with this ad I see is that the opening text and dialog give away far too easily the apparent fact that Liberty Mutual is run by hostile aliens or sentient robots bent on conquering the world. We’ve all seen science fiction movies, and we all know that the only entities to refer to people as “humans” are always robots or aliens, generally as they are plotting to eradicate or enslave mankind. So we’re onto you tentacled cyborg whatevers at Liberty Mutual! (You can’t fool me, man!)
Here’s the human spot:
