The ethical wisdom of mayhem and cavemen

If you're old enough, you'll remember the frustration of sitting through endless, inane television commercials before you could continue watching your favorite shows. You had two minutes on the quarter-hour and four minutes on the half-hour for running to the facilities or grabbing a snack. And if you're late getting back — too bad!

Most of the time, those 12 minutes per hour seemed like an eternity.

Thankfully, those days are behind us, due to the blessed inventions of TiVo and internet streaming. One has to wonder why companies still produce ads and buy airtime. Apparently, old habits die hard.

Of course, if we want to watch event lives, we still have to suffer through annoying and, sometimes, infuriating commercials. That suffering, however, does not extend to car insurance ads.

Car insurance commercials are, undeniably, in a class by themselves. Don't you find your finger hovering indecisively over the advance button when you see the talking gecko or the hump-day camel? Aren't the adventures of Flo and the Mayhem guy more entertaining than many of the shows they interrupt?

So what is it about car insurance commercials? And what do they have to do with ethics?

The answer to the second question is: everything. The answer to the first question is: Geico.

RAISING THE BAR

It was the advertising geniuses at Geico who transformed car insurance ads into a veritable artform, stealing massive market share from competitors by creating iconic cavemen, a talking lizard, a mirthful piggy, and google-eyed cash.

Geico ads provide the most compelling evidence for the benefits of free-market competition. Faced off against an animated, Australian-accented gecko, Progressive, All State, and Farmers had no choice but to up their game. They either had to produce equally entertaining ads or surrender. Upstart Liberty Mutual launched its own campaign with a burst of creative innovation.

The lesson is simple. When one person raises the bar, everyone has to learn how to jump over it. The same principle applies to ethics as well.

ABOVE AVERAGE

When motivational speaker Jim Rohn famously said that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, he gave us one of the most powerful insights into success the world has ever known: Being a big fish in a small pond doesn't merely ensure that you will swim with little fish; it guarantees that you'll become little fish yourself.

Play tennis with better players… your tennis game will improve. Read better writers… your writing will get better. Cultivate a more diverse circle of friends, your worldview will expand. Hang around with more ethical people… your moral compass will become more accurately calibrated.

Whether in our businesses, our families, or our social interactions, won't we get more out of life if we immerse ourselves in a culture of quality? By seeking out companions and colleagues who set higher personal and professional standards for themselves, we automatically position ourselves to raise our own standards. And the benefits of that will spill over into every corner of our lives and lead to success on every front, according to every metric.

In the very first verse of the first chapter of Psalms, King David declares: Fortunate is the one who does not set himself in the company of cynics.

Who are the cynics? The people who disparage all that is noble, who mock those who aspire to greatness, and who deride those who reach for the stars. That's why cynics are sad little people who spend their lives compensating for their deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy by attempting to pull others down with them into the mire of mediocrity.

But when we associate with those who aspire to genuine greatness, who expect more from themselves day by day, we can't help but be swept up in their moral and ethical optimism, which will inevitably propel us higher and higher up the ladder of success and fulfillment.

What are you going to do today to up your game?

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Rabbi Yonason Goldson is director of Ethical Imperatives, LLC. He is an ethics speaker, strategic storyteller, TEDx presenter, and author. He is also a recovered hitchhiker and circumnavigator, former newspaper columnist, and retired high school teacher in St. Louis. Visit him at at http://ethicalimperatives.com.