Eric David

An art director at Kaplan Thaler

Eric David is an art director and creative director from New York^[6]. At The Kaplan Thaler Group, Linda Kaplan Thaler's New York agency, he worked as a creative team with the copywriter and creative director Tom Amico^[1][6]. An AdForum credit for one of the agency's Aflac spots lists Linda Kaplan Thaler as creative director, Tom Amico as copywriter and Eric David as art director^[11].

Saying AFLAC until it quacked

In 1999 the agency took a call from an insurer few people could name: the American Family Life Assurance Company, known as AFLAC^[1]. In a 2013 interview for the Advertising Icon Museum, the pair recall the brief: the client wanted high awareness scores, and would pit the agency against the incumbent and one other shop^[7].

Knowledge at Wharton tells what happened next. At lunchtime Eric went outside and walked around the block saying AFLAC over and over in his head; when he finally said it out loud, he realised he sounded like a duck^[1]. In the 2013 interview he tells it himself: walking, saying the name out loud out of frustration, until it sounded like the quack of a duck, then coming back from lunch to suggest a duck that says the name as the brand's spokesperson^[7].

I came back from lunch and I said, well, why don't we have a duck that says the name Aflac as our spokesperson?

Eric David, Advertising Icon Museum interview, 2013^[7]

Linda Kaplan Thaler tells the same moment in her memoir, My Life in 30 Seconds: her art director came into her office quacking the client's name and asked whether he sounded like a duck. Her answer was that it was so stupid it just might work^[3].

A duck with one word

The team did not want another talking-animal campaign. In the 2013 interview they explain that the duck would have a single word, the brand's name, and that nobody would listen to him, just as nobody had been listening to Aflac's earlier advertising^[7]. The first spot, Park Bench, puts two men on a bench trying to remember the name of an insurer while a duck shouts it at them^[1][2]. Sources disagree on when it first aired: Wikipedia says December 1999, Fortune says 2000^[12][2].

Fortune reports that the duck idea doubled Aflac's business in three years and that brand recognition went from 11% to 94%^[2]. In 2003 Linda Kaplan Thaler put the rise in sales at 55% since the duck ads began^[1]. By his own studio's account, Aflac had about 30% awareness after ten years of spending $40 million a year on advertising, then grew from a $4 billion to an $11 billion company in two years of the duck campaign, when all that changed was the advertising^[4].

Wikipedia's Aflac article says Eric supplied the duck's ordinary quacks, with the comedian Gilbert Gottfried voicing the louder lines; we have not found a primary source for that, so treat it as unconfirmed^[12].

The duck, and everything after it

The duck stayed with the pair for more than a decade. Their studio, Tom & Eric 911, lists consumer spots such as Silent Movie, Looney Tunes, Film Noir, Chimney and Superduck, business-to-business spots (Hospital, Jackhammer, Restaurant, Education), print, a brokers campaign and a relaunch of Aflac's website with the duck as the guide^[4].

In April 2011, after Aflac dropped Gilbert Gottfried, Tom Amico and Eric David ran the open casting for a new duck voice. The New York Times News Service described them as a copywriter and creative director and an art director and creative director from the Kaplan Thaler team that created the duck; about 650 hopefuls auditioned in six cities and 11,200 more online^[6].

Beyond Aflac, Tom & Eric 911 credits the pair with business-winning campaigns for NAPA Auto Parts (NAPA Know How), Pfizer's Celebrex and Zoloft, Blimpie, Outback Steakhouse, Ruby Tuesday, Revlon, Lunesta, Capital One, Burger King, Red Lobster and Sleepy's, and later healthcare work including Zostavax with Terry Bradshaw (2016) and Eliquis^[5]. The studio's site also lists Cannes Lions, Clio and One Show awards; those are self-reported team credits that we have not verified with the awarding bodies^[4][5].

From the duck to AI

Today Eric makes AI work. His LinkedIn headline reads "Award-Winning AI Filmmaker", which is his own description^[8]. His YouTube channel, Eric D (@dadguyd), carries Facepainting, a vertical AI Short in which a hyper-real face melts, drips and re-forms in swirls of paint^[9][10].

On AI LIVE, Chris Branch has said that he, Eric and Glenn Batkin all found Midjourney v4 was their magic moment with AI, and that Glenn and Eric, both advertising people, still make more print ads and image carousels than video spec ads^[23][22][20]. In early 2026 the two surprised Chris with an AI video casting him as his Tiggy character in the style of Neural Viz, for his birthday^[20][24].

One of AI LIVE's longest-standing viewers

Eric found AI LIVE through LinkedIn, in the days when the show went out as a LinkedIn Live, and still watches on YouTube^[25]. Chris counts him among the viewers who have been watching for two or three years^[28]. In November 2025 he sent the show Simon Meyer's Halloween monster film and its follow-up, which were played on Ep 98^[16].

In January 2026 Chris met Eric and Glenn in person in New York, around Artlist's AI studio preview, and called them "our longest ever viewers" on Ep 106^[17][18]. He also told the audience that Eric had made one of the first comedy insurance ads, the kind that changed the industry about 25 years ago^[17][19]. From the chat, Eric has pitched an AI band story as an AI Spinal Tap, asked Uncanny Harry what inspires him and Phil Langer how he makes his music and sound effects^[21][26][27].