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.

Not Digital But Hilarious

Imagine yourself as a recently laid-off New York-based copywriter. You have lots of free time on your hands and need a way to put your creative talents to good use. What do you do?

Todd Norem was faced with this question, and decided to put his skills to use helping a homeless man in Minneapolis with new signs to use when he's out pandhandling.

What happened?

His new "client" Ed reported "at least a 800 percent increase in gross income on days his media ran."

Absolut Drinkspiration

A big thanks to Great Works' Planner François Bécar, who gave me a heads up on the latest campaign from Pernod Ricard’s Absolut Vodka. In a clever move to drive customer engagement and affinity, Absolut has just launched 'Drinkspiration', an impressive iPhone App that allows users to choose the right drink.

The App bases it's recommendation on the following inputs

• your mood
• the time of day
• the weather
• alcohol type
• drink color
• shape of glass
• type of venue, and more

The best thing about the App, however, is how it integrates with your Facebook and Twitter accounts and incorporates GPS functionality to give a live trend forecaster showing in real time what cocktails are being ordered around the world.

François said “Absolut is the first cocktail brand to have their own application,” and “is trying to position itself as innovative and the application shows just how creative and bold the brand is in reaching out to consumers in many different ways.”

Click here to download the free application on iTunes.

Google Ad Planner

Anyone using their Google Ad Planner account will have noticed a distinct change. From today Google has launched their redesigned account interface, offering four key improvements:

• Find sites and manage your media plans more efficiently
• Review full data for a site simply by specifying the site's URL
• Merge and copy media plans
• Navigate between pages without losing the audience you're working with

In addition Google have removed the Google Analytics filter restriction that previously affected publishers.

Budweiser Lyrics - TV Ad

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a great blogger preview of the new Budweiser Lyrics TV ad, hosted by WHPR. The event was introduced by Charles Wong, Budweiser Marketing Manager, and Matt Delahunty, DDB Account Director, and gave a crowded room of bloggers first glimpse at Budweiser's latest TV outing. The ad itself will go live on the 4th July, coinciding with Independence Day, and is the first Budweiser ad to be created for a foreign market that will also feature in the US.

The ad is driven by The Beatles song ‘All together now’ and is shot entirely from a moving train going around Chicago's L track. As it passes different people and locations, the lyrics to the song are spelt out in fun ways. Total filming time took 50 hrs over a 5 day period, in some serious cold temperatures. Obviously the logistics of all of this should not be lost - consider that every missed take required a full loop of the track to get back to the shot location. This meant that everyone had to be in perfect position at the exact moment needed. Beyond this it was also necessary to make sure that for each shot the train was going at the right speed to catch the action and keep in time to the music.

The ad also marks a first, as it will mark the launch of Sky’s Green Button technology. What this means is that the ad will appear exclusively through sky's system for the first week of the campaign.

So without further delay, the ad...



I have to say I absolutely love the ad. I've always loved 'All Together Now' but in this case I think it perfectly fits with the positioning and attitude that Diageo are trying to reflect. In the context of the current global economic situation the emotions drawn from the ad are exactly what people want - a 'pull together', 'can do' , 'get it done' attitude. Obviously this also fits in brilliantly with Obama's America.

The ad also forms the backdrop to a larger digital campaign based around the new Alltogethernow.ie Website (going live this Saturday 4th July). The site calls for people to upload their own take of one of the 'lyrics' through a video or photo of themselves holding up a number, letter or word. The site also provides behind the scenes footage, Director’s tips and a host of other content.

The ad was Written by Dave Henderson and Richard Denney, and filmed by Director Chris Palmer. The music was performed by ‘The Hours’.

Also, check out this great video from Krishna De of her interviewing Matt from DDB's last night:



Finally, a huge thank you to Cliodhna, Kate and Ruth for a great evening.