Martin the Gecko is the mascot of The Government Employees Insurance Company (GEICO) an auto insurance company. Martin is an animal mascot anthropomorphic a gold dust day gecko. He was created by The Martin Agency, voiced by Jake Wood. His first appeared in 1999 during the popular Screen Actors Guild strike. The strike prevented the use of live actors, so the Gecko ad was born.
The first commercial of the Gecko was voiced by Kelsey Grammar. It has the gecko pleading for people to stop calling him instead of GEICO, insinuating that they are mistaking gecko for GEICO. Steve Bassett, a creative director for the Martin Agency, says that in following ads they changed the voice so that Martin had an unexpected Cockney accent. In current commercials the gecko's accent is more working-class, perhaps in an effort to further "humanize" him. "As computer animation got better and as we got to know the character better, we did a few things," says Steve Bassett, creative director at The Martin Agency. "We wanted to make him a little more guy-next-door. And he looks a lot more real than he's looked before."
