When Arianna Orpello became CMO of Geico in January, she inherited one of the most recognizable brand assets in America.
Now, Geico’s gecko is getting the AI treatment.
Orpello shared exclusively with CMO Insider that an AI-generated version of the gecko is sitting down for a “live” interview on the “Fudd Around and Find Out” podcast, hosted by Azzi Fudd, the UConn women’s basketball star who became Geico’s first female athlete partner earlier this year. The podcast is scheduled to drop this Thursday.
I say “live” in quotation marks because, while the interview happened in real time, Geico still retained final review of the recording.
“He’s amazing IP for our company. He’s been around for 30 years. He’s got as much awareness as Mickey Mouse. We have a lot of reverence for that,” Orpello told me. “We’re obviously not going to mess that up.”
While there are guardrails, the AI podcast experiment offers a glimpse into how Orpello intends to modernize Geico’s marketing strategy beyond its traditional TV ads. After spending years focused on restoring profitability, the insurer is once again prioritizing growth and new ways to reach consumers. The initiative also comes at a time when marketers are testing the limits of consumer acceptance of AI-generated content.
Geico’s competitors in the insurance space tend to have human spokespeople — like Jake from State Farm, Flo at Progressive, or Mayhem for Allstate. AI-generated people often give consumers the ick, making the gecko a more natural candidate for experimentation.
Orpello said the AI gecko will appear in more places soon. You may see him on billboards inside sports stadiums, reacting in real time to the on-field action. When you pause a show like “Bridgerton” on Netflix, he might pop up in an ad that replicates the set.
Geico will be measuring whether the gecko’s appearance on the Fudd podcast helps nudge up “non-customer consideration” for the brand, Orpello said, a measure of whether people who don’t currently use Geico become more likely to consider the insurer.
Vanessa Chin, SVP of marketing at ad-testing platform System1, said Geico’s decades-long investment in the gecko has paid off. The character appears in most of the 700-plus Geico ads in System1’s database and frequently earns a 4-star rating out of 5, a score associated with strong brand-building potential.
Chin said the gecko can evolve into new formats, much as Disney has repeatedly reinvented its characters across animation, live-action, and CGI. The key, she said, is preserving the traits that make the character recognizable, whether through a signature look, a knowing glance, or the wordplay that has long defined the gecko’s personality.
“His appearances should feel like a natural fit to the environment, and his mannerisms, attitude, and message should maintain consistency to further build upon his playful and helpful reputation,” Chin said.
Applying the AI guardrails
Geico worked with the visual effects company Framestore to build its “real-time gecko AI platform,” which was trained on data and ads from the mascot’s almost 30-year history. It uses multiple models, including Google Gemini’s Embedding 2 model.
Orpello said one of the built-in safeguards is following SAG-AFTRA’s AI framework for the gecko’s voice, which is provided by the British actor Jake Wood. Fun fact: The gecko mascot was created when the Screen Actors Guild strike of 1999 barred advertisers from using human actors.
There are some other limitations, too. There are plenty of cautionary tales in marketing history of pranksters hijacking user-generated campaigns, from #McDStories to Microsoft’s Tay chatbot.
“We’re not comfortable fully letting it loose yet,” Orpello said.
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