Gray Dudek

Since posting my original thoughts and social measurement on the Compare the Meerkat campaign some time ago I’ve been asked a few times about the definitive results. Having been a casual observer of the campaign and measuring via a social media monitoring system only I was not aware of the hard fact around ROI.

However, I have dug around across a few sites and it seems that following are consensus results for the campaign(s) so I thought I would publish them here.

My original posts can be found here:

Compare the Meerkat – Case Study – Part 1

Compare the Meerkat – Case Study – Part 2

As mentioned above these are not numbers direct from Compare The Market, VCCP, or anyone similar who I can authenticate so please take them with the necessary pinch of salt. They are also from quite a few months back as that was all I could dig out from my searches. There was a stat in there around Facebook Fans which I have removed as that was inaccurate.

That said they do seem very impressive and gut instinct makes me think that they could well be in the right ball-park.

As usual Aleksandr Orlov is extremely endearing as a character and complains about everyone getting Meerkats confused with Markets (note: I must say I blame him for that as before his advertising campaign started I have never confused the two…)

Regardless, it’s the usual slick execution and has become more polished as the time has gone by. I think this is nice as the client is clearly seeing the results and therefore investing more but the traditional style of the Meerkat videos was to me much more compelling and ‘believable’ (if I can use that word about a stuffed puppet) than the beautifully recreated sets we see in the ad’s now.

Check out the latest video:

…and now check out an original video:

But my opinion to one side how has the interest in the whole Compare the Meerkat / Market campaign been performing from a social perspective?

Is it still in our favour? Are we still talking/blogging/tweeting/etc about it? Or has is become just part of the ‘funky’ (sometimes irritating) insurance sector advertising campaigns?

I checked it out on Social Radar and here’s what I found:

So from the above trend chart we can see a huge embrace of the Aleksandr Orlov character and his stories starting back in July 2009 and since then a slow decline in the number of mentions that either he or Compare the Meerkat and indeed Compare the Market are getting across the social sphere. The query used was pretty basic I admit so I’ve probably missed a few posts and Tweets here and there but the trend still remains representative I would suggest.

However, from a shakey beginning (where pretty everybody misunderstood WTF the ad was about and for that simple reason hated) the sentiment towards the campaign has grown over time and maintains a positive feeling towards it. However with declining volumes of conversations I wonder if the latest ad will hit the mark.

Well I suppose in one way it matters not really as it’s the final installment of Aleksandr, Sergei and all the Muskats…for now at least…