What Gave You That Idea?

Starlee Kine’s friend Noel works in advertising. In 2003, Noel was working in at an agency in Richmond, VA. Everyone wanted to work on flashy spots like Apple or Nike or Gatorade. Do you know what wasn’t flashy? Insurance. Which is why when a company called “Geico” became a client, everyone hoped the campaign wouldn’t end up on their desk. Noel ultimately got stuck with Geico. His job was to help them somehow figure out a clever, not painfully boring, way to explain how simple it was for people to sign up for their insurance online.

Maybe you see where this is going.

But you don’t know where it came from.

Starlee Kine guides us back through the surprising, culturally rich path of inspiration that ultimately resulted in a commercial for an insurance company.

This story originally appeared at Pop Up Magazine #6 in San Francisco.

  1. Dirk Naves

    Love this episode! What the music that starts around 11:18 (in the podcast, at least)? Thanks!

  2. Hammer Jho

    The song is “Les Métamorphoses Du Vide” by Chapelier fou. It’s on the 99% Invisible spotify playlist.

  3. Being Hungarian, I experienced physical pain by your pronunciation of Kodály. Some new generation might learn these names from guys like you and they would know wrong. The wikipedia page tells pretty correctly how to pronounce the name.

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