If you travel around Greater Cincinnati at all and aren't completely oblivious to your surroundings, there's a good chance you've seen signs advertising for personal injury law firm Isaacs & Isaacs.
The ads featuring Darryl "The Hammer" Isaacs — which have been plastered on endless billboards along the highways in Indiana and Kentucky — have more recently infiltrated the Cincinnati market, where Isaacs & Isaacs' most recent home office is located. "The Hammer" has also be spotted on many Metro buses in the area.
The saturation of advertising appears to have worked out pretty well. Isaacs & Isaacs — which Darryl began a quarter of a century ago in his native Kentucky with his father — boasts of fighting "big insurance," helping people involved in car, motorcycle and truck accidents, as well wrongful death cases and, according to the I&I website, even cases involving dog bites.
The firm claims that it has recovered over $1 billion for their clients. And some of that money I&I gets is reinvested in the company in the form of Super Bowl commercials through local affiliates that have garnered attention thanks to their cheesy aesthetic. The Hammer has had Super Bowl spots dating back to at least 2007, but it's the more recent commercials — which have a B-movie vibe akin to a Syfy channel original movie — that have received widespread press.
Last year's commercial had a little Transformers and a little Game of Thrones (plus some UFOs just for the fun of it), 2017's spot featured zombies and 2018's ad had zombies and dragons. They're kind of all over the place and intentionally goofy. The main theme is always The Hammer vs. the bad guys — insurance companies.
This year was no different. The YouTube description for the 2020 Super Bowl commercial — which scored a write-up from The A/V Club this week — says, "Go beyond lightspeed as The Hammer takes on evil aliens and villains beyond this world."
Silly sells! Issacs told Bloomberg last year that the ad buys in 2019 — running in two local markets — cost $90,000 and that production for the spots had an "'insane' six-figure" budget.
Get a look at the rest of the Isaacs & Isaacs' commercials on its YouTube channel.
