That Flo from Progressive ad has been running for 9 years and people still think she's a real employee
I looked this up after my brother argued with me for 20 minutes at Thanksgiving that Flo was a real Progressive worker who just got promoted a lot. She's played by an actress named Stephanie Courtney and she's been in over 100 of those commercials since 2008, longer than most people keep an actual job. The ads work so well that Progressive's brand recall shot up way past Geico and State Farm in most surveys I've seen. What ad character do people you know honestly think is a real person?
She's been in over 100 of those commercials" and my mom still thinks Flo clocks in at an office somewhere. Same thing with the Mayhem guy, she swears he works for Allstate. Ad actors really got people fooled.