GEICO has a good campaign going these days. It began last year with live-action commercials showing ordinary people in ordinary circumstances doing extraordinarily stupid things. I enjoyed the ad in which a man holding a cup of steaming coffee in his left hand turns his wrist to check his watch, pouring the whole thing in his lap. His deadpan expression and the fact that he simply returns to reading his newspaper suggest a fatalism that is very attractive in this situation. After all, what else can he do but suffer the consequences? Even better are the animated spots featuring the squat guy with a big nose. In my favorite of these, big nose walks up to the business end of a cannon, next to which, on a wall, is a big red button. He hums a self-satisfied, knowing, miscreant hum and presses the button, seeming to scoff at authority. Of course, the cannon fires a plump round cannonball into his face, where, obeying the laws of cartoon physics, it sticks, substituting itself for his nose and eyes, and big nose groans softly in pain.

I suspect these are effective ads. If so, they are effective because the dumb acts depicted express so well the reason we need to buy insurance. Big nose is Everyman, and Everyman is just as self-assured as he is stupid. Does it sell GEICO insurance? Not really. The brand is barely mentioned, and there’s no copy suggesting that GEICO’s rates are cheaper or their claims service better. The ad associates GEICO with an image of the need for (and hence benefit of) insurance in general. Slapping the brand on the ad is a minimal effort of suggestive repetition.

The other prominent feature of these ads is the humor. I haven’t read much about the use of humor in ads that I found compelling. The obvious things are all said, of course: humor entertains and establishes good will for the brand; humor distracts and permits a subliminal sales pitch to clear the barrier of critical thought; humor, like a teaspoon of sugar, helps the medicine of the hard sell go down. Perhaps laughing at a company’s advertisement has a lasting brain-structure aftereffect, burns a little channel into the synapses so that the brand name recalls psycho-chemical memories and triggers seratonin release.

Perhaps we can learn something from a failed attempt. Bob Garfield gave his lowest rating (one star) to the new Miller Lite campaign, a revamping of "tastes great/less filling." Retired athletes, or occasionally people tenuously associated with sports, dispute whether Miller Lite is a good beer because of "choice hops" or because it’s "smooth." (As Garfield points out, this is all moot, since Miller Lite isn’t a good beer.) One ad has two Hall of Fame baseball players, Robin Yount and George Brett, taking sides. Apparently, Brett was elected to the Hall with 98% of the vote to Yount’s 77%. Also apparently, Yount played in more all-star games. (These facts are apparent because, taking no chances on our collective baseball trivia knowledge, the ad gives us this exposition. It’s funny already, isn’t it?) Yount claims Lite has choice hops (or whatever), and Brett asks him "are you 98% sure, or just 77%?"

How does this ad affect the audience? It becomes a transparent and heavy-handed attempt to curry favor from us. Like a bad stand-up comic, Lite demeans itself by pleading too much for our approval. More than that, the ads repulse and disturb. Yount and Brett are annoying as they boast of their accomplishments.

But what, really, is the difference between this abjectly humiliating try and the genuinely funny GEICO ads? In my opinion, only concept and execution. The purpose of the humor is the same. If the Lite ads worked, they would have given me a little instant of pleasure which would always be called "Miller Lite ad." The GEICO campaign has given me a big pile of little instants of pleasure, all bearing the name "GEICO."

This is not to say that the humor establishes good will. In the first place, I think insurance tends not to be an impulse purchase. I buy insurance on rational grounds; I even read Consumer Reports articles about companies. Besides, isn’t it odd to think that humor has anything to do with selling insurance? (A more typical way to symbolize the need for insurance is to show the effects of fender benders being erased from bumpers, which most people don’t find at all hilarious.)

What I mean is that the ads don’t need to represent anything specific to the brand or the product in order to work. How else can I remember big nose and the cannonball but as "that GEICO ad with big nose and the cannonball"? Those moments of pleasure are always GEICO’s, and I am always GEICO’s when I recall them.

Thus the riskiness of allegedly humorous ad strategies. The stupidly unfunny Miller Lite ads are always memorable as "those damned God-awful Miller Lite ads." I can’t think of them without thinking of Miller Lite, and vice-versa.