• Advertising Age, Monday, January 10, 2011 10:30 AM

GEICO AOR Martin Agency has made several TV spots that ditch the gecko for very basic animated characters from Xtranormal. The characters are about as basic as CGI can get and the ads say 15 minutes is how much time you need to get a GEICO quote and "15 minutes is exactly the amount of time we put into this commercial."

Montreal-based Xtranormal lets you make cartoons via a simply typing text. The homemade videos have a big social media following with "iPhone4 vs. HTC Evo" garnering more than 11 million views. Over 9.4 million videos using the tools have been posted on YouTube since the startup offered the animation tools for free last year.

Google and Unilever have also used Xtranormal to create internal training videos.

The company is working to make money by selling a higher end version of its tools and is now introducing new characters that resemble tech geeks that look more than a little like Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer and Google's Android guru Andy Rubin.

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