Profero Thumbs/UP – CompareTheMeerkat.com

Brand: Comparethemarket.com
Campaign: Comparethemeerkat.com
Date: January 2009
Market: United Kingdom

Background
Launched in 2006 Comparethemarket.com is a trading name of BISL Limited. The property is an insurance comparison site where customers can compare quotes from over 400 insurance providers.

The Challenge
Comparethemarket.com had to create a campaign that would increase the number of prospects searching for the site by name. To get onto the shortlist in this highly competitive market, you have to be amongst the top three search results.

The Approach
Forget about buying general keywords like ‘compare’, ‘market’ or ‘car insurance’ – all they needed was a bold new asset whose influential presence offline would drive users to search for the company online through relevant keywords.

The Idea
Through playing with words and a touch of genius, the Russian meerkat Aleksandr was born. After realizing the keyword ‘meerkat’ could bring a funny character to life and would cost a fraction of the cost of buying ‘compare’ or ‘market’ on Google, the idea of creating an integrated campaign around this character came to life.

Through a powerful TV ad, the character is launching an appeal to people to stop visiting his site when looking for cheap car insurance as he only compares meerkats.
With a clear call to action, if users want the best deals on car insurance the newly born character invite users to go to comparethemarket.com instead.

The surprise was not only the development of a fully functional website to compare meerkats but an integrated media approach using a Facebook profile page, a YouTube channel and a Twitter account for Aleksandr to entertain his fans

The Results
The campaign has been an incredible success for Comparethemarket.com through ensuring the brand would became front of mind in a very competitive market.

These are some significant figures:

• The number of quotes on the website is up by 90% on the same period last year.
• Within only two months, Facebook fans have increased from 5,800 to an astonishing 290,000
• From an average of 400 followers in a month, as of today Aleksandr has 8,088 people following his updates on Twitter
• The commercial on YouTube has received a total amount of nearly 220,000 views spread across different accounts
• The campaign has been so successful that no paid search is now required for the company to be on top of Google ranks. Also, as a consequence, competitors are actually now bidding on ‘meerkat’ as a keyword to be visible on sponsored results
• Because of Aleksandr receiving a lot of attention, he was chosen as one of the 14 most famous characters in advertising for the latest Red Nose TV campaign

The Learnings

• Integration between Creativity and SEM – As mentioned within the case study, the winning formula was adapting a creative idea based on a simple search engine insight.
• Continue Building The Brand Online – They saw the opportunity of enriching the brand experience online rather then driving traffic straight to their comparison service
• Embracing Social Media when Relevant – There are so many brands using Social Media spaces inappropriately just to be visible to their consumers. However, using a Twitter account for Aleksandr to bring the character’s sense of humour to life was appropriate to the campaign rather than just using the platform because you can
• Be Different – Through the launch of a memorable character and breaking the rules from what is standard comparing sites’ advertising, the brand will be remembered to have taken the risk and turned a boring category into something fun and different.
• A Funny Accent Works Everytime…