GEICO Cavemen
"So easy a caveman can do it" — and the sophisticated, deeply offended cavemen who kept overhearing it. The insurance ads that became a cultural in-joke, then flew too close to the sun as an actual ABC sitcom.
The campaign began in 2004 at The Martin Agency, built on a single perfect joke: GEICO's website was so easy a caveman could use it — except cavemen were still alive, fully modern, and deeply hurt by the stereotype. The Martin Agency's spots played them as intelligent, urbane bachelors living in the modern world, forever wounded by casual anti-caveman bigotry. The signature image came in the famous airport spot: a caveman rides a moving walkway past a giant billboard reading 'So easy a caveman can do it,' stares, and trudges off in disgust while Röyksopp's 'Remind Me' plays — a genuinely melancholy beat smuggled into an insurance ad.
The cavemen became the rare ad characters people actually quoted at each other, and in 2007 ABC made the era's strangest programming bet: Cavemen, a primetime sitcom spun off from an insurance campaign. It premiered October 2, 2007, was savaged by critics, and was quietly cancelled as the shortest-lived ABC sitcom of its season — a flameout so complete it became the standard cautionary tale about stretching a thirty-second joke to thirty minutes.
The ads themselves never suffered for it. The catchphrase outlived the sitcom, the gecko eventually reclaimed the brand, and 'so easy a caveman can do it' still surfaces any time something is being oversold as idiot-proof.
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