When the squawking voice behind its iconic spokesduck made light of the deadly Japan earthquake and tsunami last month, Aflac wasted no time dumping comedian Gilbert Gottfried and pulling its commercials from the U.S. airwaves.
But that decision left the Columbus company’s most valuable marketing asset quackless.
In a stroke of what some marketers say was genius, Aflac launched an “American Idol”-style talent search.
A new voice will be announced by Tuesday, when Aflac hopes to premiere the first new commercial.
Company executives say they were surprised — and initially a bit worried — about how quickly the search took off. At last count around 12,500 people submitted online recordings or auditioned in person nationwide.
“Sometimes luck goes a long way,” said Dan Amos, Aflac chairman and CEO. “We backed into this. I wish I could tell you we’re that smart. We’re not. We’ve done a good job managing a crisis.”
Marketing professionals agree. The voice contest for Aflac, which sells products like cancer policies and supplemental life insurance, quickly dwarfed the initial fallout from the controversy. The company earned a measure of goodwill for firing Gottfried, whose voice never appeared in Japan, and with fans for taking the search to the street.
Finding a new voice isn’t a little thing. The duck grew Aflac’s name recognition in the U.S. from a lowly 10 percent to around 93 percent, a segment just shy of corporate titans like Coca-Cola Co. and Apple.
The company spent $228 million in advertising last year, according to a regulatory filing, half of that in the United States.
Greg DiNoto, chief creative officer at marketing and ad agency Deutsch New York, said Aflac took a risk 11 years ago signing Gottfried, a shock comic known for politically incorrect humor.
Seventy-five percent of the company’s business is in Japan, where it is the nation’s top insurer. DiNoto said Aflac was left with no choice but to fire Gottfried.
But Aflac took the focus off Gottfried and steered it to its national search, which became a bigger story. More than 8,700 news reports covered Gottfried’s offending tweets, Aflac’s response and the search. That kind of free publicity is worth millions, DiNoto said.
“The next time [the duck] appears we’re going to be waiting with bated breath to hear that first quack,” he said. But the company must get the hire right and can’t risk another PR snafu.
The search took on a life of its own. Friends of Amos’ father, Paul Amos, a company co-founder, wanted to audition. Aflac Chief Marketing Officer Michael Zuna got calls at home from would-be duck voices.
Dan Amos had considered a public casting call for commercials for years. A research firm that surveyed Aflac customers about six years ago found a third compulsively quacked the company’s name in interviews, completely unaware of it.
Zuna said his team and the company’s ad agencies, Digitas and duck creator Kaplan Thayler, immediately thought of a talent search within hours of sacking Gottfried.
Within a few days they presented their plan to Amos, along with a rehashed version of a silent movie-styled ad to recruit for the job. The ad aired March 23, nine days after Gottfried was fired.
Audition tapes poured in and live tryouts were held in several cities, including New York and Atlanta. The creative agencies listened to all of them.
The company was down to eight finalists as of late last week. Five are novices and three are professional voice actors. Aflac declined to identify them.
Zuna will make the final call with Amos and Aflac U.S. head Paul Amos II, his son.
Aflac’s approach touched on fan involvement in a way advertisers dream of.
“Marketers want to engage in an interactive way, where the consumer co-creates content and the message,” said Sharon Shavitt, a marketing professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Ken Bernhardt, a marketing professor at Georgia State University, said he expects the company to choose the best candidate for the job, but that could be a novice or a professional voice actor not known to the general public.
“It could have the potential to launch a career for somebody,” he said.
DiNoto said Aflac could re-jigger the formula with the new voice.
“It represents an opportunity to revisit and tinker with the character, but you must think twice. You have a machine that works.”
Dan Amos said the company is looking more for evolution than revolution, but Zuna said they’ve considered expanding the duck’s vocabulary from just one word, “Aflac!”
Fans couldn’t pass up the chance to voice the spirited, if slightly annoying waterfowl.
Karen McCrea of Buckhead, a voice-over artist who’s done commercials for Nalley auto dealerships among other companies, jumped at the chance to quack for a living.
McCrea, 56, has been doing voice work for more than 20 years, but back when she was a student at the University of Georgia she took an introductory speech course that she thought would be an easy A; she got a C instead.
“[The professor] told me, ‘You have too much nasal quality in your voice. You sound like a duck,’” McCrea said.
A self-described fan of the duck, McCrea said she learned recently she wasn’t a finalist.
“I kept hoping. I tried,” she said.
That kind of fan dedication stuns Amos.
The Aflac chief recalled a 1974 New York City trip with his father to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. One night the men passed a Coca-Cola merchandise store in Manhattan.
“My dad looked at me and said, ‘This is when you’ve arrived. When people will pay to wear your brand, you have arrived,’” Amos said.
He said he had no inkling the Aflac duck would become so popular.
“It’s changed our company,” he said.
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