It seems as simple as moving a few letters around, but a new collaboration between Aflac, the provider of supplemental insurance and Ben Affleck, the actor and director, has been years in the making.
Pairing Aflac, which has thrived with commercials featuring an anthropomorphic duck squawking out its name, and Affleck. the star of “Good Will Hunting,” “Gone Girl” and “Argo,” is an idea that has been in the ether for some time, acknowledges Garth Knutson, the insurer’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer. “This has probably been tens of thousands of peoples’ idea,” he says during a recent interview. “It’s one of those things that people just make as a joke. Even Ben has been joking about it for a long time — maybe he has been a little bit more annoyed in the past.”
Does Knutson feel he’s under pressure to stand out? “I think about it all the time,” he says. “The answer is, ‘Absolutely, yes.’”
