Adwatch 05.08.09

Marketing's unique weekly analysis of advertisement recall in association with Q Which of the following TV commercials do you remember seeing recently?

Comparethemarket

The comparison site's latest ad develops the popular meerkat formula to entertaining effect

I'm confused.com, bored.com and ofFended.com. You only have to turn on the telly of an evening to know that Sir John Hegarty is right - so much of what our industry creates is really not very good. But almost everyone loves that meerkat Aleksandr, and even more so in puppet form, beating the crap out of a puppet in a suit with a salami.

As a creative, I am of the opinion that if somebody is going to take the time to watch one of my commercials, then I have a duty to inform, engage and entertain them. This ad does all these by the bucketload.

I am also still of the opinion that to give my clients the best value for money, our work needs to have as long a shelf-life as possible. Well, this has enormous rewatchability.

All of the other comparison site ads fail to engage, they don't entertain or inform. I'm sure they have some research to say otherwise, but the simple fact is that however effective these ads are, they could be more so if they had a decent idea at their core.

As my hero [and co-founder of DDB] Bill Bernbach said: 'Properly practised creativity can make one ad do the work of 10.' Our friendly meerkat is the only one diat pokes his head above the dross.

The brand could have rested on its laurels, but this uses another mechanic to take the idea a step further. The Punch and Judy theme was a stroke of genius, with the suited puppet echoing Churchill's smug little bulldog: 'How much can you save me on my car insurance?' This spot quite literally beats up all those other insurance ads. It beats mem out of the market. The ad is fearlessly creative and fantastically lampoons rivals as Aleksandr laughs stage right.

The impact of social media on the success of this campaign has been phenomenal, showing the extraordinary cut-through die ads have had - countless sites and blogs have spread the word of Aleksandr. On Facebook, the character has managed to gather more than 500,000 fans, who, at the time of writing, have added a total of 9 16 fan photos and endless wall posts. He also has 2 1 ,807 followers on Twitter, which is more than Fern Britton has. He has even been reported as having more influence on Twitter than Hillary Clinton or Boris Johnson.

This is a fictional meerkat we're talking about.

Even more shocking is that I'm actually interested in car insurance for the first time in my life.

Comparethemeerkat.com could quite easily have kept the formula as it was, but has been very creative with how it has developed an already successful idea, employing a fresh mechanic to develop it.