Advertising spotlight focuses on ad campaigns that are interesting for one reason or another. It could be they are funny, well composed, bad, not thought out or in today’s case long running. Compare the Market is a UK price comparison website that was originally founded in 2006. They allow a user to look at what is available in a given field (insurance, mortgages loans, etc.) and see what the best option is. In 2009 they launched a marketing campaign that would make them one of the most well known in the country.
Compare the Market vs. Compare the Meerkat
The premise was simple. Have CGI meerkat named Aleksandr tell people not to use his site ComparetheMeerkat.com for car insurance and instead go to ComparetheMarket.com. For the next year British air waves were inundated with ways to tell the difference between the two sites. In the early days of the campaign they kept to things simple and even introduced us to Aleksandr’s sidekick Sergei.
Part of the reason it worked so well was that it was snippy, memorable and funny in how its delivery. Kids could latch onto the funny characters and parents could get a chuckle in some of the wordplay. As time wore on though they couldn’t do the same thing so they switched it up.
The family history
Over the next few years we got ads that delved into different parts of the characters lives. They looked at Aleksandr’s family history, how meerkat’s have battled mongoose and had a brief feud with ComparetheMarket’s “real” owners. We even got to see his home village back in Russia and meet inhabitants. There is a whole cast of characters on their website if you’re curious you can check it out here. Around this time is when they started to offer free cuddly toys if you bought your insurance through them. Since they had this wide cast of characters you could get anyone. This doubled down on the appeal to children which in turn would mean that parents would be more inclined to buy their insurance through them to get the toy.
They’d make them for a limited time and switch it up whenever the ads changed. For instance when they went on safari the toys were safari themed. The on-going story continued here with various mishaps on their safari, but eventually they let the surrogate son Oleg stay in Africa. Around this point in the campaign’s history they dropped the Compare the Meerkat angle and they became the official face of Compare the Market. The story telling in its first 5 years was really effective. They often had little to do with the product they were selling until the hook at the end of the advert for people to visit the site. In the years going forward we’d see a balance of vignettes and more traditional ads.
New phase
Across this phase they took the duo to Hollywood to promote the companies Meerkat movies deal. It saw them do parody versions of famous movie genres, introduce trailers for upcoming films or annoy Arnold Schwarzenegger. They’d now provide the details needed for a customer to be intrigued by the product while doing their usual shenanigans. This was by and large the route they took with the Meerkat meals offer they did not long after. This era of the campaign was mostly about highlighting the extras and how much you could save in everyday life.
As time wore on they stripped back to basics focusing on their antics as the face of the company. We saw them introduce Auto-Sergei and at some point they readopted Oleg and another baby meerkat called Ayana. They re-introduced the toys and a storybook that the kids in the ads like (it’s called Big Beetle Bert and they have the stories on their YouTube channel).
One of the reasons that I think this particular ad has lasted for as long as it has is that the premise has always been simple. It allows for things to change rather easily since it started in an inherently silly place that has meant they’ve had a bit more movement. It has clearly worked since they have kept it as a key part of their brand for over 12 years and they don’t seem to be showing any signs of changing up their winning formula.
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