continues hounding us to “come on down!!!!” but never fully explains exactly why we should make the descent and just how deep “down” we’ll need to go.


Closer to home we have Rhode Island’s highly visible Big Blue Bug acting as the silent spokes-creature who touts the expertise of a company that extermi- nates bugs just like him... only much smaller.


One of my earliest jobs as a copywriter was to write and produce a 30-second TV commercial once a week for what was once Rhode Island’s favorite su- permarket, Almacs.


I’d receive a list of “price/item specials” for the week on Monday and by Wednesday afternoon I had to have a 60-second TV commercial approved and ready to produce at Channel 10’s broadcast studio.


Fortunately, I didn’t have to come up with a spokes- person because Almacs already had one. He was local actor/comedian, Bob Colonna. Bob created an- other one of those laughably likeable characters that just made people feel good about a supermarket that was pretty much like any other market in the area-- except for their spokesperson


More recently, a new iconic spokesperson for Pro- gressive Insurance has appeared on the advertis- ing landscape, and for reasons I really can’t quite explain, every time the blue-eyed, pale-skinned “Flo” comes on TV, like millions of other people, I stop whatever I’m doing and watch her. There’s just something about Flo’s strange, haunted look, her gar- ishly red lips, her retro hair-do and her almost insane earnestness that captures your attention. They film her in her crisp, nurse-like “uniform” against a sterile white background highlighted with the brilliant blue Progressive logo that matches her eye color exactly.


Flo, played by actress/comedian, Stephanie Court- ney, exudes the kind of intense sincerity that makes you feel almost sorry for her because of how very seriously she takes her job and wants you to like her. Until Flo came along, the Progressive Insurance Company was just another non-entity.


Flo has been aptly described in the press as “weirdly sincere,” and her image has become so popular that kids are actually dressing up like her for Halloween. She’s even been added as a downloadable character in a video game.


In real life, Courtney’s a graduate of “The Ground- lings,” an improv’ comedy group in Los Angeles, which also produced such hilarious, off-center eccen- trics as Pee Wee Herman and Lisa Kudrow.


In addition to Flo, Courtney has played numerous types of characters on TV shows like “Mad Men,” “House,” “Cavemen,” and “Men of a Certain Age,” but nothing has gotten her noticed like the iconic role of “Flo.”


I looked Courtney up on-line and discovered among other things that she was born and raised in Stony Point, NY, and graduated in ’92 from Binghamton University where she got her degree in, get this— “criminology!” I’m not quite sure what, if anything, that brings to her character.


In a recent interview, Courtney describers the “Flo” character she inhabits like this: “It’s me at my silli- est…. Flo could be one of my improv’ characters, always on and sort of cracked in a weird way.”


I read somewhere that it takes two hours to do her hair and her make-up which includes making her enormous eyes match the blue of Progressive’s logo.


I think it’s pretty safe to say that Flo has become the most instantly identifiable advertising icon of our time. (Even more so than the somewhat creepy, Ronald McDonald.) Flo stirs the kind of recognition every advertiser hopes their money will buy them. Can you remember anything that Flo has ever said in a TV spot about Progressive’s products or services? I really can’t. I just know that Progressive Insurance is one company that knows how to grab my attention and make me receptive to their overall “message,” namely that they are extremely anxious to please me with their products and service.


I haven’t tracked how many years Flo has been doing Progressive’s adverting now, but it continues to be a pretty long run. I still really like watching her and it’s interesting to see how many different ways they can work her into their varying messages without com- pletely changing her character.


My hats off to who ever originally created the Flo character. I bet even they are surprised at how amaz- ingly “famous” their spokesperson has become.


Vol. 3 Issue 2 | 25


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