Vern Fonk

Who was Vern Fonk?

Vern Fonk was a Seattle entrepreneur best known for founding Vern Fonk Insurance, a high-risk auto insurance agency with seventeen offices, servicing Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

Vern Fonk Insurance is well known in the Pacific Northwest region for its humorous and off-color television commercials, which generally appear on local late-night television and have run since 1994. The commercials, which typically parody movies and TV shows as well as other Northwest personalities, are usually written by and star Rob Thielke, manager of the Fonk agency office in Everett. Due to Thielke’s prominence in the ads, he is commonly believed to be Fonk himself. The company’s slogan, “Remember to honk when you drive by Vern Fonk,” ends each commercial. KCPQ, a FOX television affiliate in Seattle, put together a collection of Vern Fonk bumpers for JOEtv.

Vern Fonk died of a blood infection in 2006. After Fonk’s retirement in 1995, Vern Fonk Insurance was owned by his son-in-law and daughter, Kevin and Rene Mulvaney until they sold the business in 2010 to New York-based Confie Seguros, as part of that company’s plans to become the first nationwide insurance distribution company primarily dedicated to Hispanic consumers.