Compare the Meerkat

Compare the Meerkat is an advertising campaign on British commercial television for comparethemarket.com, a price comparison website, part of BGL Group. The adverts feature Aleksandr Orlov, a CGI fictional anthropomorphic Russian meerkat and his family and friends. Orlov is portrayed as being of aristocratic stock and the founder of comparethemeerkat.com: the campaign centres on his frustration over the confusion between his website and comparethemarket.com, playing on the similarity between the words market and meerkat. Orlov's catchphrase is "Simples".

The campaign, launched on 5 January 2009, was created by advertising agency, VCCP and production company Passion Pictures. The adverts proved popular and became a commercial success for comparethemarket.com, which became the fourth most visited insurance website in the UK as a result. A book featuring Orlov was published in 2010, and other merchandise has been created in tandem with the ongoing campaign.

Campaign

The campaign, designed by ad-agency VCCP, was launched on 5 January 2009, involving a TV spot, companion website and social media links. The advert featured Alexsandr Orlov, a CGI animated fictional anthropomorphic Russian meerkat, who complains at the confusion between his site, comparethemeerkat.com, and comparethemarket.com. The character explains that he has launched a TV advertising campaign to make visitors aware of the difference.^[1] The companion website, comparethemeerkat.com, was created alongside the TV advert and in 2010 was receiving more than 2 million hits per month.^[2]

The TV spots, and the characters, were directed by Darren Walsh at Passion Pictures. Walsh has directed all of the meerkat television and cinema commercials to date, and has won several awards for the work. In the adverts, Orlov is voiced by Simon Greenall.^[3]

On 11 August 2009, an opinion piece in The Guardian newspaper accused the advert series of racism for mocking Eastern European accents. However, the Advertising Standards Authority, following a complaint by the author of the article, stated that it had not received any similar complaints.^[4]

On 12 November 2012, Compare the Market began sponsoring the ITV1's long-running soap opera Coronation Street as part of a three-year deal with producers of the series.

On 3 April 2015, comparethemarket.com launched Meerkat Movies, offering customers two-for-one cinema tickets. They partnered with films such as Terminator Genisys and Ant-Man. The advertisements featured the movie trailer, sometimes an interview between Orlov and the cast, and a comment that the movie tickets are two-for-one with Meerkat Movies.

Characters

The adverts are fronted by Aleksandr Orlov, a meerkat. According to an interview with the character's designer and director, Darren Walsh at Passion Pictures, Orlov became a billionaire in the 1970s. He is described as living in Moscow, while owning a large mansion in South London, and spends his time on vanity projects such as his website, numerous self-portraits, petitions and film production.^[5]

The campaign has also featured secondary characters from amongst Orlov's friends, family and employees. Most notably Sergei, Orlov's sidekick and technician who has also featured in his own adverts. In the adverts, Sergei is Orlov's IT technician, tea-maker and sidekick. Before working for Aleksandr, he used to be head of the principal design group for the Soviet space programme during the 1980s. He designed the Meer(kat) Space Station, and now works with Orlov and 'Compare the Meerkat'. Sergei is first seen in the ad "Sergei", and later guests in "Jacuzzi", "Art Class" and all three of the 'Orlov Family Trilogy' advertisements. Sergei had been frequently mentioned on Orlov's Twitter and Facebook accounts, one time was prior to being included in an advert, and Aleksandr even started a petition to add the word 'Simples' to the dictionary because Sergei didn't approve of the word in a game of Scrabble.^[6] Sergei has also starred in his own adverts without Orlov.

The 2011 campaign focused on a fictional Russian village named Meerkovo. The adverts featured new characters complaining about the danger caused to the town by confusion over Comparethemeerkat.com and Comparethemarket.com. The new characters were Maiya, Yakov, Vassily and Bogdan. A companion website was set up for the campaign containing a map of the town.

Oleg is a baby meerkat who first appeared in an advert broadcast on 25 December 2013, where Sergei and Aleksandr find him on their doorstep and take him in. On 25 December 2014, whilst on a trip to Africa with Aleksandr and Sergei, Oleg decides to stay there after befriending the meerkats there.

The April 2015 campaign sees the launch of Meerkat Movies. After suffering from empty nest syndrome, Aleksandr and Sergei travel to Hollywood for a holiday, and whilst on a set tour Aleksandr realises that the best way to reward customers is with cinema tickets. In October 2015, showed an advert were Sergei goes on a date to a cinema with Nicole Kidman. Since the launch of Meerkat Movies, only Aleksandr and Sergei appear in adverts, other characters have only appeared in re-used Christmas adverts.

Commercial success

Following the campaign, comparethemarket.com was ranked as the 4th most visited insurance website in the UK, up from 16th in January 2008 and the site's overall sales doubled.^[7][8] By 2010 the site had increased its market share by 76%, where competitors' share had fallen by up to 30% over the same period.^[1] As of August 2009, Aleksandr had more than 700,000 Facebook fans and 22,000 followers on Twitter, while on photo-sharing site Flickr there is a popular gallery of Aleksandr's family, described as 'a marker of the tragic state of humanity'.^[9] According to entrepreneur David Soskin, the wordplay of "meerkat" vs. "market" overcomes the high cost of the latter keyword in sponsored search engine listings.^[1]

The character remains extremely popular and a record company has expressed an interest in releasing a single featuring Aleksandr.^[10]

Beginning in late 2012, Aleksandr and the other Meerkovo residents have appeared before and after advertisements during the UK soap opera, Coronation Street, of which comparethemeerkat has become a sponsor.

In 2014 Aleksandr and Sergei featured on the Neighbourhood Watch logo to mark the charity's 50th anniversary.^[11]

The campaign was launched in Australia on 1 February 2013.^[12]

Merchandise

Book

Orlov's "autobiography" was released on 28 October 2010, entitled A Simples Life: The Life and Times of Aleksandr Orlov.^[13] The book generated more pre-orders than that of other books released at the same time including Tony Blair's memoirs and more than double the pre-orders of Cheryl Cole's, David Jason's, Russell Brand's, Jon Snow's, Melanie Chisholm's and Dannii Minogue's autobiographies.^[14] The book was published by Ebury Publishing and the autobiography reached No. 2 on the Amazon UK website on its first week of sale in October 2010.^[15]

Downloads

The Australian website hosts downloads such as wallpapers, ringtones, text alerts, voicemail messages and some commercial videos. There is also an iPhone application containing background information, a database of English phrases in "meerkat" pronunciation (created from audio clips from the TV adverts), a mongoose "detector", and some videos. The British site previously had these features, however it no longer has them and the app is no longer available, however there is a 'Meerkat Movies' app to redeem your voucher code.

Cuddly toys

From 1 July 2011, a cuddly toy representing one of the characters has been given away with each policy sold via the website.^[16]

So popular are these toys, that the marketing campaign involving them has doubled the company owner's personal fortune.^[17]

On eBay, complete collections of these toys regularly sell for between £70 to over £150.^[18]

In December 2013 a baby meerkat called Oleg was introduced and subsequently released a toy. In December 2014 Oleg was removed from adverts, but despite this the toy is currently still available.

In addition to the seven main characters, there have been limited releases of the school teacher Maiya in a spy outfit, and baby Oleg in a safari outfit.^[19][20]

To mark the launch of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice two new meerkat toys were released featuring Sergei in a Superman outfit and Aleksandr in a Batman outfit.

See also

• Monkey, another popular anthropomorphic animal used in British advertising on products such as PG Tips and ITV Digital since 2001.
• GEICO gecko, Cockney-accented character in a similar campaign for GEICO insurance in the United States since 1999.

References

Bibliography

• Soskin, David (1 November 2010). Net Profit: How to Succeed in Digital Business. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0470660813. 

External links

• Official website