Big Lou

Big Lou’s the name. Insurance is the game. Are you ready to buy term-life insurance? I have just the guy you need. Big Lou. I recently heard his advertisement on the radio – he’s “on meds, just like you.” It’s OK if you are “a little porky”, diabetic, or have high blood pressure, Big Lou can set you up.

I had dropped my car off at our garage, Old Waterloo, for a service and as is usually the case, they gave me a loaner. As I drove home, the radio was already on and tuned to WMAL, a local DC based talk radio station. I was about to change the channel when the ad with Big Lou came on.

The announcer assured me Big Lou could find me a term life insurance policy, even if I “was on meds, had high blood pressure, was taking anxiety meds, had type two diabetes, or was a bit porky.”  Big Lou could find me a $1,000,000 term policy for the low, low price of only about 200 bucks a month. All I needed to do was call the number provided and Big Lou would take care of me. 

I laughed. I had not heard the “Big Lou” ads in years, but they had not changed. Big Lou was still “on meds, just like me and you”, and ready to help. 

Before I reached home, the ad ran one more time. A few minutes later I hit the Big Lou jackpot. It was Big Lou in a different insurance ad. This time he was selling life insurance to men who needed it now that they married their “trophy wife,” after needing to buy life insurance to cover themselves for their three previous wives (three earlier mistakes according to Big Lou). Evidently this is a requirement for divorce cases in some states. In this ad, Big Lou wasn’t quite like us. He has only been married twice. He could still help though, and maybe even consolidate the life insurance policies needed for the three previous wives and save us more money. 

I am serious. You cannot make this stuff up. And yet, I am sure someone called the broker, wanting to talk to Big Lou and see if he could help them out of a jam.

I looked up Big Lou on the internet when I arrived home. It turns out he is a fictional character (duh!) for an insurance brokerage firm. I thought about the demographic they were targeting with the ad. Obviously the ad must work if they were using it all these years later. Still, who actually bought from Big Lou?

I had a mental picture of Big Lou, as I am sure you do. It was not particularly flattering – a sort of John Goodman character in the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” Maybe I was wrong. I decided to use Google Gemini (Google’s AI service) and asked it to draw a picture of Big Lou. I then asked Gemini to put papers in one hand, and a drink in the other (how I pictured Big Lou in my brain.) You can see the results below – just about how I imagined him in my pea-brain. Looking at the picture, I did not feel any greater inclination to call the company. ;-).

It is doubtful I will ever call Big Lou. Still, I want to thank him. He put a smile on my face that lasted the rest of the morning. How often does a radio ad, or any ad for that matter, do that for you?

A link to the ads is in the addendum, should you wish to bring a smile to your own face today. 

Addendum:

• Do you want to hear the Big Lou Ads yourself? Click here for three of them: https://www.thebigad.com/2023/09/12/radio-commercial-that-says-were-just-like-you-big-lou-life-insurance/
• WMAL-FM (105.9)– is a radio station with a conservative talk show format and is owned and operated by Cumulus Media. Other ads on the drive home that morning targeted pre and peri menopausal women who wanted to lose 30 pounds in a couple of months, and those who wished to enroll their sons in a military high school that focuses on values and not progressive education courses.