New Compare the Meerkats Ad

Everyone's favourite entrepreneurial, aristocratic, Russian Meerkat is back. Billionaire Aleksandr Orlov is back with the latest ad for his Compare the Meerkat site (not to be confused with Compare the Market!).



This is more fine work from Compare the Market's creative agency VCCP, and brings Aleksandr back to perform a Punch and Judy-style puppet show, complete with a baton-wielding fight scene. The ad will launch on July 5th and run on ITV1, Channel 4, Sky 1, Five, ITV2 and ITV3.

Aleksandr states:
"Despite many fans of previous advert, peoples still making mistake. New ad will let peoples know about my meerkat business, not other website, Comparethemarket.com, which is for humans searching for cheap deals on their car insurance."

The ads have had a massive resonance with the public and aside from boasting quotes on the site by 80% (according to the company), the ads have also driven a huge interest in the animals as pets.

Within other online channels the campaign is showing equal success with nearly 480k fans on Facebook and over 18k followers on Twitter.

Aleksandr Orlov Goes To Facebook First

It's been a while since Compare the Meerkat's Aleksandr Orlov has released a new tv ad, and this may just be about the best one yet. What makes this ad unique, however, is that it was released exclusively through Facebook for the campaign's 600,000 friends. The ad won't air on TV until today.

This is the latest example of how the Compare the Meerkat campaign has been able to fully tap into the potential of Social Media. Aside from the 600,000 fans on Facebook, the campaign has also been able to grow 27,000 followers on Twitter. Last month it was also revealed that Aleksandr will be getting his own web show to interview celebrities. First up is Piers Morgan.

According to VCCP, the agency behind Compare The Meerkat, in the first 9 weeks of the campaign, quotes on Comparethemarket.com leapt by 80%, while awareness of the brand tripled from 20% to 59%.

Compare the Meerkat Out-takes

Without doubt Aleksandr and his Compare the Meerkat campaign have been one of the best campaigns in the last 6 months. Brilliantly simple, extremely funny and integrated into a multitude of digital and non-digital channels. Both tv ads have gained huge viewing rates online, the use of Twitter is superb (with hilarious updates and personalised reply messages) and the microsite itself is straight to the point.

So, in what I hope is not the last time I can post about Compare the Meerkat, here is another hilarious video of 'out-takes' from the ad shoots.

Updated Compare the Meerkat Website

My love of the Compare the Meerkat campaign is probably clear to anyone who has read my previous posts. I think this is a kickass campaign that has developed what could have been a juvenile and unexciting play on words into one of the most creative and humourous ads of the last year.

With that in mind, you can imagine how excited I was when Aleksandr started Tweeting that the website was going to be relaunched with new content. And I definitely had reason to. Picture galleries, family histories, ringtones, the ads and the out-takes; there's so much going on here. This is just brilliant creative work.

Fair play to everyone who worked on this campaign, hats off to you!

New Compare the Meerkat Ad

I posted about the first ad a little time ago, and was extremely excited to find out this morning that there is a second ad out now. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it available to embed, so you'll have to check it out here.

All-in-all, this campaign is simply brilliant. Considering a fairly flooded UK market, for comparision websites, this campaign has thrust CompareTheMarket.com straight to the top of everyone's minds. It's fun and quirky, but above all it's complete. Here we have a perfect example of a campaign that integrates a seriously heavy weight suite of marketing tools and manages to utilise each to their maximum effectiveness.

Compare The Meerkats is centered around a viral concept. It is the new Cadbury's Gorilla. The campaign has a host of digital executions including a microsite, youtube clips, facebook page and a fantastic twitter feed (this is particularly good with personalised messages and regular updates).

The people behind this are CTM, and I think they deserve a serious pat on the back - this is one of my campaigns of the year for sure!

Old Spice

Every now and again a marketing campaign comes around that manages to cross an imaginary boundary that exists between ‘the industry’ and ‘the outside world’.

What I mean is, we (members of ‘the industry’) will often comment and discuss the brilliant merits of a particular marketing campaign from the point of view of creativity, technical merit or results. However, everyone else (‘the outside world’) can often be oblivious to these things. Brilliant metrics and results simply don’t affect their individual, everyday lives. Then along comes a campaign that taps into something special and hits all the right notes. A previous example was Compare The Meerkat, which I have posted about several times, but what has happen here is even better.

Top notch admen Wieden + Kennedy have taken a brand that many perceived as old and dated, and not only won a Cannes Film Grand Prix but created a Social Media frenzy. Their campaign for Old Spice launched in February during the Super Bowl and has gone from strength to strength to strength. Featuring former American Football star Isaiah Mustafa, the campaign is all about just how awesomely manly he is, and how ‘your man’ could smell like him.

The campaign saw immediate success with millions of video views of the ads on YouTube but the real success, imho, has been the personalised responses that have been created for everyone from celebrities to renowned bloggers to ordinary folk who published questions or comments to the campaigns various touchpoints (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook etc.). These personalised video messages are all viewable on the Old Spice YouTube channel and are absolutely hilarious. The campaign has been so successful in fact that the Old Spice YouTube channel is now the most viewed sponsored channel on the video platform.

The question of course that still remains is weather this online goodwill translates into sales. I can’t imagine it won’t but for now that’s just my opinion. Stay tuned and I’ll update with news as it comes out.

4320:LA

I've been waiting for someone to do something really cool on Twitter from a brand point of view. Sure @twitchhiker got from the UK to New Zealand on nothing more then the gratuity of strangers, and Fox's Biscuits and Compare the Meerkat are both making great use of Twitter (imho), but no single brand has done anything really, really special. At least that was hat I thought.

V Australia and Virgin Atlantic are in mid-campaign for their 4320:LA competition. The proposal: 3 friends spend 3 non-stop days in LA living the life of movie stars - they have to tweet every minute for the entire time they are there - 4,320 minutes to be exact - if they do it, 3 round the world tickets.

So what did they have to do? The First Stage was simple - the 3 entrants who submitted the best 3 entries got through to Stage 2. For Stage 2 each entrant nominated 2 friends to form their team. These 3 Teams then completed a mini 72-minute challenge set by Nova Radio's Ryan, Monty and Wippa (how Australian are those names!). The challenges involved various physical activities which tested each Team’s physical and/or mental agility and teamwork skills. Overall each Team was then judged on the following;

• the outgoing nature and personality of the Team Members;
• the number of Twitter followers each Team Member has; and
• how frequently each Team Member uses Twitter and the current and past activity on their Twitter account.

Following these 2 stages, the lucky 3 people were whisked off to LA to get down to the real work. The 3 chaps who got through to Stage 3 were:


Their original entry tweet was: "We'll go one better. Pose with one new friend every minute in LA. That’s 4320 friends, to help us have the time of our lives."

I think this is a brilliant promotion, an excellent use of Twitter and something entirely original. Fair play to whoever came up with this - if anyone knows the agency behind it, please let me know.

Each of the lads was asked for a one line description of themselves...

Kelvin
The world's most gifted footballer never to make it. Culinary master - the creator of 'McYap.' Unwavering belief that geeky kids are cool.

Matt
He's Bruce Wayne (Office Geek by day/Party King by night). Loves karaoke & marathons. Parties like he runs, it’s all about the long-haul.

Nathan
Daredevil skier (often coming off 2nd best). Once resulted in a de-gloved chin and lacerated tongue. (Improving his tolerance for chillies).

McDonald's Appoints VCCP

Yesterday Brand Republic carried a marketingmagazine.co.uk article by Joe Thomas, about McDonald's appointment of VCCP to manage its employment brand and recruitment advertising. The appointment came after a three month pitch process, with VCCP facing down DDB in the final round. Leo Burnett remains McDonald's lead agency in the UK.

VCCP's recent work includes O2's rubber duck tv ads (including an Irish version) and my favourite campaign of the year - Compare the Meerkat.