Comparethemarket.Com

By Jukes, Matt

Creative review Comparethemarket.com

Campaign Comparethemeerkat.com

Brand Comparethemarket.com

Agency VCCP

Price-comparison sites have done the predictable thing in the credit crunch - they are bombarding us with seemingly low-budget advertising to try and appeal to our sense of value.

In this noisy landscape, comparethemarket.com faced the problem of getting lost. The company needed to create a campaign that would increase the number of consumers searching its website out by name.

VCCP's answer was to create a campaign that ranged across all media and subverted the traditional language of pricecomparison messaging.

The creation, Aleksandr Orlov, is a Russian meerkat, founder of comparethejneerkat.com, a site for comparing meerkats. This delicious pun is a stroke of genius, as it provides humour and simultaneously creates a brand advocate.

Aleksandr's TV ad is an appeal to consumers to stop visiting his site when they are looking for great deals on car insurance. This is more than a cute TV ad, though. In Aleksandr, VCCP has created a rich world integrated across a wide media spectrum. The campaign includes a website, a community on Facebook, and direct access to the brand hero through Twitter.

I like that VCCP has carried the joke the whole way through the campaign. The compare themeerkat.com campaign site encourages the user to actually compare meerkats, and select the right meerkat for you. There is enough content on this site to keep you entertained for a good five minutes, which is a lifetime on the internet.

Built to maximise SEO (search engine optimisation), the site provides plenty of crossreferences to comparethemarket. com. Nothing has been forgotten - even buying the Google key word 'meerkat'. It's this level of detail that is so impressive.

I think the success of this campaign lies in VCCP understanding the need for twoway communication between brand and consumer. Aleksandr tweets about 10 times a day, talking with the consumers, not just at them. This is the cornerstone of his success; the consumer is dying to engage with him. In a little under 24 hours, he was able to get 4,000 people to 'friend' him, before Facebook removed his profile for breaching its rules on advertising.

He's now back with a fan page, and already has 40,000 fans (currently adding devotees at a rate of roughly 2,000 per day) that follow his every move.

This isn't a passive authence: they have taken hold of the world of Aleksandr Orlov and have been moulding it as they see fit. On Facebook, users are uploading images of meerkats and even creating videos. On Twitter they are asking direct questions to Aleksandr, and more importantly Aleksandr is answering them; this has earned 4,200 loyal followers. But this engagement with the brand doesn't stop there; there is even a host of small unofficial fan sites popping up.

Let's pause for a second and think about what all this means. Across the UK, there are people who are spending their spare time creating a fan site for a mascot for a car-insurance comparison site. This is reach that you can't buy.

It would have been easy to sell comparethemarket.com in a very factual, budget way like many other price-comparison sites. However, a daring decision has pushed it ahead of the pack and created a brand experience that people want to engage with, not an experience they have to endure. Simples!