Caveman Ad Writer Discovers Fire, Moves On

The advertising industry has lost one of its hottest writers. Joe Lawson, the writer of Geico's famous caveman commercials, has left the ad game to pursue a career in Hollywood, his former employer, The Martin Agency of Richmond, Va. confirms.

It's a natural evolution for the copywriter. Lawson is already on staff as a writer for ABC's Cavemen series set to premiere this fall on Tuesdays during primetime. For the show's pilot he is credited as a writer and co-executive producer, and he's the only Martin Agency staffer to work on the show. The pilot's other staff includes executives from the show Grounded for Life and directors from Will Ferrell's Blades of Glory movie.

The 30-minute show follows three cavemen, Joel, Jamie and Nick, as they try to figure out where they fit in the modern world. Whether or not consumers will sit through a program about 60 times the length of their usual caveman fix is yet to be seen. But the show is quite the buzz of the advertising world as many have tried to launch TV shows based on ads and haven't been successful.

Before nurturing his successful creative career, Lawson was a numbers guy. The Tennessee native majored in economics at Wake Forest University and worked at GlaxoSmithKline in both brand management and mergers and acquisitions.

After joining The Martin Agency in 1998, he created commercials for Coca-Cola, UPS, NASCAR as well as Geico. And his Geico portfolio is more than mango-salsa-eating cavemen. He's written ads starring the talking gecko, too.

For the first caveman campaign in 2004, he worked with art director Noel Ritter. By the second campaign in 2006, Ritter had left the company and Joe continued to write the increasingly popular ads. Steve Bassett was the creative director on both campaigns.

by Willow Duttge