Meet Aleksandr, he is the founder of CompareTheMeerkat.com, which is a nice play on words on the business angle of this company, CompareTheMarket.com. Both sites offer something of value, the ability to find cheap car insurance through an aggregated portal (that’s the Compare the Market Site) the other is a site where you can compare meerkats, ‘cuz quite honestly, who doesn’t want to do that?
Sound crazy? Yes, but check out the results. According to AdAge.com, the word “meerkat” through search engine cost per click programs only costs $.08 (cents) per click. Pretty good when you think about how popular the word “market” is through traditional search engines.
The popularity of the Russian accented Aleksandr can’t be understated. 500,000 plus Facebook fans and 26,000 Twitter followers can’t be wrong. AdAge reports that “despite having the lowest marketing spending of all its competitors (around $25 million), traffic to the website increased by 400% and there was an 80% increase in the number of quotes given out.”
Wow!
So what’s the story here? Well, CompareTheMarket.com went from a relatively unknown brand to one of the more interesting companies doing business online. Sure they want your car insurance business, but if you aren’t looking for that and you really dig on meerkats, you are going to be quite pleased. You can compare meerkats by size, hobbies and location. I prefer my meerkat to be large, into martial arts and residing in Bankok.
Here’s my meerkat of choice:
Now, I can send this to my friends if I want, or download a larger image, although I am not sure why I would do that. What I do know, is that if I am looking for car insurance (and I’m not so please don’t call) I will check out CompareTheMarket.com.
The message here is that something as off the wall as Aleksandr Orlov the Meerkat can be productive. This is a business that took a huge risk and is reaping the rewards. Kudos to VCCP for putting a crazy idea in front of their client. More kudos to the client for listening to their agency.
Do you see any other insurance companies doing anything remotely close to this? Nope. CompareTheMarket.com has raised the level of play in the insurance category and has done something many have been trying to do for years; make insurance cool!
Author: Josh Fleming
www.lessingflynn.com
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