Ooh Yes! Churchill The Car Insurance Dog Soft Toy Outsells The Meerkat
The holding company of Churchill Insurance, RBS, whose future remains in doubt, must be pleased as punch to learn that sales of the Churchill nodding dog soft toy were ten percent higher than those of rival
car insurance comparison website Compare the Market over the christmas period, according to figures released today from the Association of British Toy Distributors.
Before they all go barking mad down at Churchill, it should be pointed out that the figures relate to sales of the bulldog stuffed toy against those of Alexsandr Orlov the Compare The Meerkat main character.
Alexsandr Meerkat was only available through Harrods and supplies were restricted according to Benja Katya who runs the online
Meerkat Toy Store in partnership with Amazon.
She told Insurance Blogger. "The dog is now a part of British Culture and sales of the toy will enjoy longevity despite who owns the brand."
"
Meerkat Toys are becoming more popular everyday and the interest is spreading globally. Much of this must be attributed to the success of the Compare The Meerkat TV and Internet Social Media Marketing Campaign. Ironically the Meerkat phenomena which started out as peculiarly British thing has spread as far as Namibia!"
The idea is seemple and not a new one either!
Remember the Nat West piggies?
With Social media here to stay as part of the Insurance Marketing mix, it looks like the Insurance logo soft toy spinoff market is a very lucrative source of extra income for cash strapped
Insurance Marketing departments.
Insurance Blogger wonders what furry animal will be next to capture the hearts of the Britsh Car Insurance buying public?
Labels: car insurance, churchill, Churchill Bulldog, Churchill Toys, Compare The Market, Compare The Meekat, Insurance Brands, meerkat soft toys, meerkat toys, meerkats
UK TV Ad Revenue Underwritten by Car Insurance Price Comparison War!
When Insurance Blogger was a nipper.....
Back in the 1960's if you were lucky you had a black and white televison - the box!
with an aerial that looked like a sea mine or something out of Doctor Who sitting on top of it.
There were 2 UK TV Channels:
The BBC - Mother of the Nation and voice of the world......
& ITV - which was a loose consortium of regional independent television companies that broadcast on their own frequency AND network distribution relay.
This meant that every time you changed channel, which was a process of turning a huge dial until you got a fuzzy ghost image - you had to turn the aerial as well to switch to a different signal supplier.
This caused much distress in every UK Household with people arguing over aerial placement whilst trying to watch fuzzy images of man supposedly walking on the Moon.
The Independent Television Companies were funded by advertising revenue for commercials placed in programme 'intermissions' known in the UK as 'Commercial Breaks'. This allowed companies like Granada to fund their own programmes and make 'soaps' like Coronation Street.
Product placement was banned on The BBC and was also severely limited as to the acceptable use of on screen products, within ITV programme drama of the day.
This ban has very recently been lifted and you might soon even see the BBC's Phil Mitchell on Eastenders popping down to his local Post Office TM for some Travel Insurance or visiting a car insurance comparison website for his Jaguar insurance, coming to our screens as desperate TV production companies try to raise additional funding in hard times.
Even the BBC will not remain immune in the face of falling TV viewing figures and the rise of integrated digital services.
Today ITV is still reliant upon revenue sourced from intermission commercials, however with global distribution opportunities for selling programmes abroad they are now able to find sponsors for most popular shows.
According to a recent survey by business intelligence group DataWatch Monitor UK, Insurance adverts account for 52% of the total advertising revenue spend on UK TV commercials and specifically
car insurance which accounts for 63% of that.
So Who is spending all this money, millions of pounds that is underwriting some great UK independent TV productions?
Well unless you live under a rock or don't own a screen (Boxes are consigned to pre-history along with the Dodo and the Betamax by the way!), you can't have failed to notice that there is a
car insurance price comparison site war going on out there at the moment with the BIG 4 all trying to outdo each other on spend and it's getting dirty..........
So who are the big 4?
Well in no particular order , though Google has one....
Money Supermarket.com
Confused.com
Compare The Market.com
Go Compare.com
So who is winning this war?
Well it's hard to give a definitive answer because campaigns are in a constant state of flux and one month it might be the furry
meerkat toy rodent or the next month, the fat opera singer at No.1 in the Sales Charts. It is difficult to COMPARE!
The TV ads always tell the prospect car insurance purchasers to visit their website, so a fairly accurate measure of website usage over time by website name search, can be extracted from Google and here are the results....
WACKY RACES
As you can see, that annoying pompous man from the Dragons Den is leading the way by far at the moment with the furry rodent bringing up the rear. This is likely to change at Christmas when Compare The Market bring out the talkng meerkat. Looks like the fat annoying tenor over there Ad is working!!! For Now!
To see how your website compares to the big boys do your own visitor comparison with your competitiors over at
Google Trends for Insurance Price Comparison giantsLabels: advertising, car insurance, compare car insurance, Compare The Market, Confused, Go Compare, insurance comparisons, insurance marketing, MoneySupermarket, price comparison
Compare the Meerkat ? Buy a Meerkat Toy!
You've got to admire the marketing people behind the Compare the Market - Compare the MeerKat campaign.
They've tapped into a vein of the British love of wildlife, first made popular by the BBC's 'Meerkat Manor' programme, and made it their own. I am still amazed how the TV adverts turn the heads of all kids present every time the 'cuddly' little creatures appear on our screens.
However even with the long term success of the TV campaign and both the Compare the Market and Compare the Meerkat websites sitting in the top 50 of Google for car insurance, even the people at BISL, usually ahead of the game appear to have missed out on this one.......
FOR
MEERKAT TOYS CLICK - SIMPLE!
You can now buy lovable Meerkat toys and dress them up like the famous Alexsandr Meerkat and play compare the meerkat all day long!
Sure to be a massive hit with kids all over the UK this Christmas it looks like BISL may have missed the boat on this one!
With the number of meerkat characters created on Compare the Meerkat you would think this would be a massive opportunity to extend the marketing campaign by doing a joint venture with a soft toy manufacturer like TY!
What's more http://twitter.com/Aleksandr_Orlov has over 29000 followers who they could immediately meerkat, sorry market to!!
So are BISL planning to bring out a branded
Meerkat Insurance version of the soft toy!
They Sure are. Apparently an exclusive deal has been done with Harrods who will release a limited edition of 5000
Talking Aleksandr Meerkat soft toys and dolls this December. Latest word has it that pre-sales have already accounted for every meerkat soft toy they can produce! Meekat Mania is sweeping Britain!
The soft toy market is hardly 'soft', especially at Christmas, and incredibly these things become very collectible quickly and command huge prices on auction sites such as Ebay.
They could even give away a set of meerkat toys with every car insurance policy sold!
Seemples!
You can find out more about the
Meerkat Soft Toy here
Labels: car insurance, Compare The Market, meerkat soft toys, meerkat toys, meerkats
