I really must say hats off to the creative team behind Aleksandr (sic) the meerkat, which I’m sure you’ll all know by now as comparethemarket.com’s fabulous new marketing concept. And of course congratulations to the in house marketing chiefs who stuck their necks out to sign it off.

You can imagine them all scratching their heads saying, ‘we love it, but will everyone else?’ And of course we do! He is just one of those characters we can’t help but love.
Not only is the ad a stoke of genius, but they have followed it through in a really impressive way.

If you haven’t yet compared meerkats, I suggest you do here . They could have so easily gone for just a holding page to link the two sites, but allowing people to create ‘scubakat’ from Rio and comparing it with ‘rollerkat’ from Miami Beach gives their integrated campaign credibility and creates the longevity which will help people remember who was behind it all. Given they have reported the site crashed recently due to traffic overload, it seems a resounding success.

Twinkling on Twitter

Such a lovable character as Aleksandr works fantastically with social networking sites, and his Facebook page is clearly helping him establish a cult fan base, with 111,215 signed up to date. But it’s Twitter where Aleksandr really shines.

His regular updates about his solid gold golf clubs and his fur coat from Minsk keep him firmly in mind. Posting photos of his meerkat mum and dad encourage his Twitter fans to interact with him, and after a fortnight where the world appears to have gone Tweeting crazy, I’m sure his fanbase there of just under 3,000 is set to grow.

It’s great to see the campaign also uses PPC to generate maximum awareness - shown here -who would have thought ‘meerkat’ would be a desirable key word?

You might think that while Aleksandr is fun, and is an entertaining friend on have online, he won’t actually bring home the bacon. I think you’ll be wrong. Wrapping up his concept so closely with the name of comparethemarket.com means we will remember not only him, but why he existed. I for one have been impressed enough to mentally commit to making them the first place I look when I need to renew my car insurance.

Even the son of a mongoose would agree. Simples!

(For more info see)

Posted by Charlotte Hancock