The great Drayton Bird, direct response marketing and copywriting maven par excellence, recently held a free webinar for his subscribers.
The topic was the “10 Best Ads Of The Last 10 Years”. The ads were selected primarily on the basis of how effective they were and the results they produced.
One of the ads (campaign, really) was for UK insurance comparison site “CompareThe Market.com”.
This is the campaign featuring the (now) famous meerkat Aleksandr Orlov, proprietor of meerkat comparison site “CompareTheMeerkat.com”.
Here’s the original ad…
Now, this campaign has been extremely effective.
The immediate results of the campaign were…
…an increase in market share of 76%(!). Perhaps more importantly, quotes were up by 80% and the cost to make a sale down 73%.
Note these were the results in the first 9 weeks of the campaign. I don’t know what the longer term results have been but the longevity of the campaign and the fact that the theme is continuing to be developed suggests that the campaign continues to deliver.
I’d suggest there are a number of things to note about this ad.
Firstly, it does a great job of getting attention. There’s something about cute furry animals that gets people to watch, at least briefly.
Then it introduces and develops the “Compare The Meerkat” concept quickly…
…but swiftly brings in what they really want to talk about…”Compare The Market”.
There are some very clever psychological tactics being used here.
The whole “Compare The Meerkat” thing is funny and a little bit bizarre…and gets “under the radar”. With the viewer’s defences down temporarily, it’s then the perfect time to introduce the product.
They then use a very clever tactic, what’s sometimes called “Choice of One” to direct attention on the action they want the viewer to take…
…which, of course, is checking out comparethemarket.com.
Note the repetition used, as well.
A very, very clever ad and very effective.
Now, there’s something of a funny story about how the origins of the campaign.
Apparently, the creative types assigned to the campaign were struggling to come up with a decent idea. The UK comparison site market is very competitive and there really didn’t seem to be anything unique to “Compare The Market”.
(As an aside, for a site dealing with car insurance, it’s a terrible name.)
Anyway, bereft of ideas they retreated to a local pub for a break and in search of inspiration.
After consuming copious amounts of booze, the best they could come up with was that in some bizarre way “Compare The Market” sounded somewhat like “Compare The Meerkat”.
Somehow, this seemingly absurd idea did not disappear and was somehow developed into the remarkable campaign that we now see.
In case this sounds like something from “Mad Men”, what makes this campaign work so well, in my opinion, is the attention to detail.
There is in fact a site www.CompareTheMeerkat.com and, of course, it’s an extension of the ads…
…and used to feed people back to the home site www.CompareTheMarket.com.
A very well executed campaign and despite the seeming craziness there is a relentless focus on the action they want people to take…
…which is going to www.CompareThe Market.com…
…”For Easy Way To Save On Car Insurance”.
Simples, huh…
…but brilliant.