Alva Review-Courier -

Every year as the Super Bowl approaches, my thoughts turn to television ads. I (and everyone else who watches the professional football championship game) enjoy seeing the advertisements that sponsors unveil during the contest.

A few years ago I wrote an article about Super Bowl ads, so I won’t examine that cultural phenomenon again. I will, however, reiterate one point from that article: that my favorite television ads over the last few years have been those for insurance giant GEICO.

Recently, GEICO (short for “Government Employees Insurance Company”) has been running an ad that is a takeoff of infomercials that sell packages of musical “greatest hits” of various genres.

In this infomercial spoof, the host and hostess ask viewers to vote for their favorite GEICO ad of all time. Meanwhile, the company has been running some of its old “greatest hits” ads to refresh voters’ minds.

I have never owned a GEICO insurance policy, but its entertaining ads give me a warm and fuzzy feeling about the company – which is, of course, a large part of the point of running ads in the first place.

For me, at least, the opposite is also true. If I find ads to be annoying, then my initial feelings about the companies running the ads-that-make-me-cringe are negative. These ads most definitely include those of another insurance giant whose policies I do not own, Allstate.

Allstate has for several years been running ads featuring a character who causes people all sorts of trouble. He tells viewers that they need to buy an Allstate insurance policy to protect themselves from “mayhem, like me!” I hate those commercials, but my wife thinks they’re funny!

If I were to go insurance shopping (which I am not because I am perfectly happy with my non-GEICO and non-Allstate policies) would I be swayed by the ads the companies run? Hopefully, I would be smarter than that! But who knows?

Next week, I will look at a few more television ads that I find annoying – even if other viewers do not!