The name Aflac is one letter away from Affleck. That observation has been floating around for years, and now it has finally become a real advertising campaign.
Aflac has struck a deal with Artists Equity, the production studio founded by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and financier Gerry Cardinale, according to Variety. The first new commercial debuts Saturday during ESPN's College GameDay and will also run during ESPN's Monday Night Football and in connected-TV inventory.
Garth Knutson, Aflac's senior vice president and chief marketing officer, acknowledged the joke has been around a long time. "This has probably been tens of thousands of peoples' idea," he said. "It's one of those things that people just make as a joke. Even Ben has been joking about it for a long time — maybe he has been a little bit more annoyed in the past."
In the first ad, Affleck receives a lesson on what Aflac does and how supplemental coverage works from three prominent coaches: Nick Saban, Deion "Coach Prime" Sanders and Dawn Staley.
The partnership arrives in a crowded insurance advertising landscape. Aflac introduced its duck mascot in 1999, just months after Geico debuted the Geico Gecko. In the years since, consumers have been exposed to a long list of insurance characters: Jake From State Farm, Progressive's Flo, Jamie and Mara, Dr. Rick, Allstate's Mayhem, Geico's Cavemen, Farmers Insurance's Professor Burke, and most recently Liberty Mutual's fuzzy yellow Liberty Biberty.
The financial gap between Aflac and its competitors is significant. Many major insurance companies spend $1 billion or more annually on advertising. Progressive spends more than $4 billion, according to data from S&P Global and Dowling & Partners. Aflac typically spends under $100 million on U.S. advertising, according to MediaRadar.
Aflac operates differently from those competitors. It sells supplemental insurance, which pays out extra cash benefits for out-of-pocket costs and expenses not covered by primary health insurance.
Knutson said the pressure to stand out is real and constant. "I think about it all the time," he said. "The answer is, 'Absolutely, yes.'"
He noted that the duck mascot offers one financial advantage in that competition. "The Duck," he said, "is extremely cheap for a celebrity, at least from a payment standpoint. He works for bread, a different kind of bread than what you or" — the quote was cut off there, but the point was clear. The Affleck campaign represents a step up in star power and spending for a brand that has historically operated on a fraction of its competitors' budgets.
