Dr. Rick’s Travel Tips Fuel Progressive’s Paris Campaign

The plane lands in Paris, and you immediately point out the Eiffel Tower to your seatmates and anyone within earshot, after you’ve cheered the pilot’s flawless touchdown.

Dr. Rick is so disappointed in you.

“No clapping,” says the exasperated yet ever-patient character in a new Progressive Insurance ad. “It’s the end of a flight, not a Broadway show.”

But just as he’s done for the past four years, Dr. Rick is ready to save young homeowners from themselves—by that, he means from becoming their parents. This time, there’s a seasonal travel hook in the popular, ongoing campaign, which flirts with the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris without having any official ties to the Games.

Like other non-sponsor brands taking advantage of the upcoming global event, Progressive has chosen its words carefully. Ads in the series, launching today from longtime agency of record Arnold, refer to watching live sports and visiting Paris landmarks, with no mention of the Olympics. (That would run afoul of carefully guarded trademarks.)

Capturing the zeitgeist

The marketing move is central to Progressive’s mandate “to deliver more culturally and contextually relevant advertising,” Sade Balogun, senior business leader of brand experience, told ADWEEK. The Olympics represent “a moment on the cultural calendar to intercept” consumer attention while the Games are saturating mainstream media and popular consciousness.

Meanwhile, travel to Europe and elsewhere is booming. France alone is expected to see as many as 16 million visitors this summer, Balogun said, with Americans making up at least one-quarter of that group.

Dr. Rick trivia: Ads starring the self-described “parenta-life coach” have touched on travel in the past, but the current campaign is “a more full-throated effort tied to our evolving strategy,” Balogun said.

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