They don’t sell employer’s insurance, do they?

Switch & Save – “Erin heads down Main Street and demonstrates how a simple switch can make life a whole lot easier.” This is the entire premise behind Esurance’s cartoon advertisement, but what was its ad agency thinking? As the lead character, Erin, walks down Main Street she encounters a construction worker who is pounding on a sidewalk with a baseball bat in a futile effort to shatter the concrete. Erin pulls a jackhammer out of thin air and tosses it to him, solving his dilemma. Next up, we find a painter attempting to paint a building section by throwing paint against the wall. Erin supplies a paint brush for this poor guy. Further along, we stumble onto a man, dressed in a suit, sitting on the roadway and attempting to send what appears to be smoke signals. A cell phone does the trick this time. Finally, we meet a woman carrying groceries without a bag. As she spills the items, Erin catches them in a environmentally conscious, reusable shopping bag.

I get the idea, Esurance. Erin is there to help the everyday white person do their job easier. However, my perception of this commercial is that Esurance wants the severely stupid individuals in your community as customers. Either the advert’s characters are laughably ignorant, or the viewer is trapped in a really lame surreal dream. Seriously, would any of you want to encounter any of these characters while they are behind the wheel of a moving vehicle? Perhaps a more disturbing interpretation is that Esurance actually believes its customer base has the mentality of a cheerful three-year-old child, and the only way to reach the company’s target market is by appealing to their idiocy. The message I’m getting from Esurance is, “We know you’re stupid, so don’t strain yourself thinking and just give us your money.” Sadly, I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m one of their customers, and what we have here is a failure to communicate. Now, where did I put that damn paintbrush?