With September here, we thought we’d take a look back at some of the top ads with brand characters from the summer. Here’s a snapshot of the brand characters that performed best in this summer’s ads. 

For this list, we chose the summer ads that outperformed their 12-month category norm by 10% or more. The top seven ads come from five different brand characters. Whether flesh or fiction, brand characters are actors, animals or animation marked by their repeated association with the brand.

Summer’s Top Performing Ads featuring a Brand Character

#1 Professor Nathanial Burke

Our hardest working brand character is Professor Nathanial Burke. The first national, consumer-tested ad Ace Metrix has featuring Professor Burke (a.k.a., actor J.K. Simmons) dates back to late 2010. This means University of Farmers has been around for nearly four years! 

While several big name insurance companies employ the brand character strategy, these three Farmers ads from this summer rose to the top.

The winning combo for the Professor is his ability to not only be funny but also to impart Information and remain Relevant at the same time. For the highest scoring ad, “Hiding Coverage,” consumers awarded it an Information score 7% above the 90-day category norm as well as a Relevance score 10% above.

The ads are also, genuinely, funny. Below is the combined word cloud for all three top performing ads. Fifteen percent of consumers mentioned how “funny” the ads were. The ad “Get The Right One” even has a funny score of 55 (out of 100), which is noteworthy considering the average Insurance ad has a score of 28. (And think of the sheer number of insurance ads that go for funny.)

So, is Professor Burke and Farmers the most funny of all insurance ads? We haven’t dug that deep quite yet, but if you’re interested, let us know! We’d love to go to school with you on determining that answer.

#2 Yellow M&M

Yellow M&M is featured in the ad that outperforms its competitive set most at 16%. The M&M’s crew might just be the most lovable of all of advertising’s animated characters. The Yellow M&M had his seat in the spotlight earlier this year during the M&M’s Super Bowl ad. Yellow returned this summer in the highest scoring brand character ad, as compared to its category norm. “Meet Cornelius Pumperdinkle” capitalizes on Yellow’s trademark goofiness and child-like whimsicality.

A peek at the ad’s combined word cloud reveals Yellow’s likeability and wide-appeal. Consumers shelled-out the love with 17% using the word “love” to describe their feelings toward Yellow and the chocolaty candy. Another 15% used the word “cute” and 6% thought the ad was “funny.”

Fortunately for M&M’s, featuring the big, yellow guy brought a high Desire score, 14% above the 90-day Candy & Gum category norm. Many consumers were ready to pop back a few hard-shelled chocolates after watching the spot (non-talking chocolates, of course).

Interestingly, this spot faired even better with consumers than M&M’s national Super Bowl ad. This is likely because of the Information imparted in the spot (ie: the impression of quality standards), with many consumers learning that not every peanut is lucky enough to become a peanut M&M’s. 

#3 The Two Sonic Guys 

Peter and T.J. are the very notable brand spokesmen of Sonic and actually are called by their real-life names in the ads. The duo first started appearing in Sonic commercials back in 2002. 

“Early Summer Start” is perfect for this list because, well, it’s about summer. When we asked consumers what their favorite part of the ad was, 19% indicated that the comedic characters were the best. 

Sonic is able to artfully weave in the character humor with information about its food and drinks into its 0:15 and 0:30 spots. Reading the optional comments, consumers have a positive association between the comedic characters and the Sonic brand; it is definitely a different take on advertising compared to other QSR brands. Sixteen percent of surveyed consumers mentioned how “funny” the summer spot was.

#4 Wendy

Another QSR character tops the list with Wendy’s red-headed woman. This quirky gal who really can’t get enough of Wendy’s food, has been its advertising staple for over two years. 

For the ad “Steakhouse Junior,” older consumers could particularly relate to the ad’s message—wanting a steakhouse quality piece of meat for a fast food price.

Eight percent of consumers found Wendy’s situation pretty laughable, using the word “funny” to describe the ad.

With the use of brand characters, comes (hopefully) increased brand recognition. A whopping 85% of survey respondents appropriately identified that the ad was from Wendy’s post-viewing.

#5 Geico Gecko

Did you think the famous gecko wouldn’t make the list? Rounding out the top five, in all his gecko-glory, is Geico’s intelligent little lizard. One might wonder, however, if he didn’t get a little help from his friends Rocky and Bullwinkle. With the inclusion of three well-known characters, 31% of survey respondents said that the characters were the best thing about the ad. Otherwise, finding the next highest scoring ad featuring the gecko takes a bit of hunting. 

Now that the Geico Gecko is going on his 15^th year in the ad business, he has become synonymous with the 15-seconds-or-less insurance brand. Ninety percent of consumers were able to identify the ad’s brand easily, post-viewing.

Wondering about how other brand characters performed this summer? Or even this year? Reach out to us, and we’d be happy to share some insights.