Meerkat moves into documentaries

Where is this brilliant compare the meerkat/ market campaign going next? After the recent book launch, now it appears Aleksandr the media-mogul is moving into documentary making, the clip below providing a nice round up of the ATL activity over the last two years and teasing of things to come on December 30th. Will Meerkovo become as famous a fictional place as Platform 9 and 3/4 at Kings Cross?

Everything they do with this campaign just makes me smile. Nice attention to detail as ever. Enjoy.

Masses go mad for Meerkat author....

A month ago, in yet another spot-on-the-money execution in this now long running campaign, Compare the Meerkat's Aleksandr Orlov launched his new book. Ad character turns DJ (podcasts), turns movie star (3 long form pseudo-movie releases), turns author, what will the meerkat entrepreneur do next?

(Be-warned long post, but my blog is also my car park for useful stuff remember!).

As one has come to expect from this aristocratic meerkat, this was not just another book launch:

First came the Facebook updates talking about a forthcoming book (16th Sept),  and linking to Amazon:

 Then emails from Amazon (as well as CTM)  inviting pre-order in what was clearly a smart piece of targeting.

In the run up to the launch Facebook posts enticed and teased, and pushed to YouTube:

Then a series of Facebook posts / tweets went on to moot a publishing launch in what proved to be a very much a la mode for 2 days only Pop-up shop on London's Regent Street.

Followed by an event (again showing how smartly the team behind this campaign are at mirroring general Facebook users behaviour with Aleksandr's), which no doubt helped them gauge the number of copies they needed to stock.

As ever with this incredibly smart campaign, the shop itself was executed beautifully, as was the surrounding communication which covered Facebook, Twitter, emails and of course the comparethemeerkat.com website.

The shop, on the edge of an arcade was beautifully on-theme & full when I dashed in after work one evening:

Downstairs was a "life and times" of Aleksandr and his family taking a museum theme,

...whilst upstairs was decked out mini-cinema style, showing his longer form mini-movies and of course selling his "signed" books.

The PR machine was as ever well oiled too, and I spotted pieces in the Evening Standard on the day of the shop launch:

And with the book topping the Amazon topsellers too, this article in the literary section of The Independent:

Three days after the launch (29th October), Aleksandr's book was at no 2 in the Amazon Topsellers list:

A week later (4th Nov), Aleksandr told his 769.5k Facebook fans, & 42k Twitter followers of the audiobook launch on iTunes: (It's also available on Audible.co.uk, so multi-platforms covered off).

3 weeks later still and how do things stand?

Well today (26th November), less than a month before Christmas,  a quick dig around some of the e-stores revealed this picture:

Aleksandr Orlov: A Simples Life stands at:

#3 in the Amazon most wished for book charts
#2 in the Amazon most gifted book charts
#3 in the Amazon best sellers (now with 66 days in the top 100 (incl. prelaunch))

Nor is it just an Amazon/iTunes distribution deal...
#2 in the Play.com bestsellers & today featured as editor's choice on the books homepage

#4 in the W H Smith books best sellers list

#16 in the Waterstones best sellers list, #36 in Tesco.com and #30 in iTunes audiobook chart.

Not bad for a meerkat of Russian shopkeeping origins!

And there was I about to hit "post" when the following tweet burbled onto my screen inviting Aleksandr's fans to vote via Facebook for which TV execution they should run at Christmas.

Spot on again, engage, invite participation, listen to what the people say.

And yes obviously I bought a signed copy of the book ;-)

Cartoon Musical Fun

I'm bonkers busy at the moment. The list of posts I intend to write gets longer, but time is short, so look out for my coming soon musings on the launch of the Alexander Orlov book, complete with Pop Up Shop, my first impressions of the Samsung Galaxy Tablet which launched last week, and increasing irritations with some mobile apps. In the meantime here's a piece I wrote recently on Microsoft Kinect and how we need to design more physical forms of interaction into our brand experiences, and there's some fun bits and pieces I've posted recently over on my Posterous.

Meanwhile, here's a musical cartoon medley I found on YouTube. Maybe it's my background working in animation, but listen carefully to the lyrics. How many cartoons can you spot that you recognise?  I love the fact that there are people out there that have the time and the talent to do this stuff. Fun, original, and made my smile. It's a great recipe for sharing.

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The who wants to be talented Prime Minister Idol competition

The panel cast their votes but the jury is out as the semi-final results were inconclusive:

Lots of "Con-Dem" jokes flying around Twitter this morning, will be interesting to see what happens next.

Pick your Meerkat

Some Friday fun from my favourite furry friend, Aleksandr Orlov of Compare the Meerkat.  He's had a busy few weeks releasing releasing various things (more later) to keep the campaign momentum going.

Today,  I got this Facebook announcement (and a similar one on Twitter too), announcing something of a site refresh for the Comparethemeerkat.com site (not to be confused of course with comparethemarket.com)

Now you really can have some more fun picking different meerkats in different scenarios / against different criteria:

So here's my small yoga meerkat in Sydney :-)

And now you really do (at last!) get to compare the meerkats

Have a play....

And if you don't fancy that, then you could try the latest Meerchat podcast (not as good as the last one with the Hof, but...), or play around with the official or the unofficial iPhone apps.  Interestingly I found this unofficial one some time before the official one came out .

I suspect that the team noticed that an enterprising fan had dedicated time and energy to creating a credible and on-brand app, and thought they'd better do an official one with a few bells and whistles.

Or failing which, my final offering is his second 60second movie trailer: The Battle of Fearlessness.  I like the ad pieces but it's all the other interactive bits, the responses he makes to the tweets and comments that are for me what makes this campaign.

Starting the New Year with a meerkat movie

I've been mulling over all sorts of stuff over the Christmas break, particularly things of a mobile flavour, but for now I am going to content myself with starting 2010 with the latest from my favourite meerkat.

Yesterday, Aleksandr was teasing the launch of his new TV ad/film trailer and asking people to make an appointment to view it's debut on ITV.  Digital glue. Online driving eyeballs to offline. Nice.

The partnership with the London freesheet is still going strong, with this morning's paper featuring a prominent shout out for the trailer too....

The trailer is worth a watch - it's on the Compare the Meerkat site, just as if it was a studio release, and there's some great humorous touches in the way it's been put together, and encouraging people to sign up for news of the full release.  Smart. More people in the e-crm programme. Hints of more to come.

Go on, spare 60 seconds as you ease yourself back into work :-)

Challenging old notions of value via social media

I hate the phrase social media.  I'd rather think about people.  People represent OTT  (opportunities to talk)  if we have to get back into media & evaluations terms. Conversations. Recommendations. Sharing. Suggestions.  Hugely influential.

There's lots of people like me scratching their heads and trying to crack a definitive measurement / value model for digital interactions with consumers in the digital space.  There's lots of things we can measure, and some we can't (yet) but one of the biggest challenges is relating direct cause and effect of money spent on initiatives in social spaces and sales uplift.  It's a tricky one. How do you qualify and quantify social influence to a client that's used to seeing x# TVR's (tv ratings) = y% sales uplift, and, rarely (and rightly) is digital / social media activity conducted in a vacuum.

Half the battle is getting clients to think about the longer term and get out of a campaign led mentality that only sees value in ££ and 6 week windows. Value in my mind means relationships, interactions, contributions, permission to engage in dialogue, reviews, all of which contribute to brand / product consideration sets and eventually sales. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe in 3 or 6 months.  That's why the Aleksandr Orlov/Compare the Meerkat campaign is so brilliant. There are always people in the market for one insurance product or another. Stick to campaign phasing to raise awareness and you'll only ever capture the active prospects for that 4 week window of activity. Yet by being regularly visible and releant via social media you can achieve ongoing top of mind awareness.

Marketers also need to recognise that consumers will only talk about things when it's relevant to them and their lives. So your brand might have done something interesting, & engaged someone's attention but the glowing recommendation to a friend might not occur for 6 months. In my books that doesn't make it less valuable at all. Just harder to correlate and prove,  because the recommendation will no doubt have come about because of multiple stimuli that may have occurred on or offline.

There are a few "social media" success stories being touted around(apart from my meerkat mate), and I've just tripped over this round up of some of them. Take them for what they are, often supposition, and not spelled out, nor with details of what the objectives were but to stimulate thought it would be 4 minutes of your day well spent.  Then go and think about whether you are setting the right real objectives for your digital activities and therefore the right metrics.

Aleksandr Orlov interviews the Hoff and adds podcasts to his repertoire

As ever, my mate Aleksandr Orlov from Compare the Meerkat has been smart about teasing us all week via Twitter and Facebook with hints about forthcoming new content.

Well it's just been released, seemingly on Twitter first.

Beyond contributing to his celebrity status and the connection his ever growing fanbase (610k fans on Facebook, 30k on Twitter) have with the campaign, by branching into audio he'll also contribute and bolster site SEO. Super smart.

I urge you to listen.


Cunningly it also crams in a plug for the new limited edition Aleksandr cuddly toys on sale in Harrods. Subtle and very smart.

This podcast has utterly the content highlight of my week.  I wish I could meet and personally congratulate the scriptwriters. They must be having so much fun. I have been chortling to myself for the last 12 minutes.

12 minutes I CHOSE to spend with a piece of branded content.  Imagine the cost of that in passive TV advertising terms?  And it was so funny I'm going to go right back and listen to it again.

This campaign just goes from strength to strength and I am enjoying every interaction I have with it.

Genius.

The meerkat is marvellous but not just by coincidence

My fondness for Alexsandr Orlov, the star of Compare the Meerkat oops I mean Market's social success story is well evidenced (at least for my regular readers).  Snuffling around Slideshare this evening I found the presentation below which pulls the whole campaign together nicely for you. If you don't use Slideshare or Scribd as a research resource when you are looking for thought, fact or inspiration you should, not to mention considering the role these document sharing sites play when you have content to publish.

Amelia Torode's presentation from IPA Social Oct 09

View more presentations from The_IPA.

Meerkat magic continues

I'm risking repetition I know, but I really can't help but celebrate the genius that is the Aleksandr Orlov / Compare the Meerkate/market campaign. I am continuously cheered by my relationship with Aleksandr, and did indeed compare the market recently when renewing my car insurance, almost certainly as a result of the campaign as I didn't even bother to consider any other market aggregators.

Via his tweets, and Facebook status updates he's been teasing new content/tv ad to come for a week or so now, culminating in him sending  out these links 30 minutes ago:

 

The link take you to this this entertaining interview with media partner Metro (free newspaper) and does a great job at illustrating the involvement consumers have with the campaign, as the questions are taking from real tweet questions people have asked Aleksandr (and to which he frequently responds).

Interestingly, at almost the same time I got an email with this link to the new TV ad before it breaks on air. Smart, smart, smart: using a combination of channels for language and context appropriate content..

More from my favourite meerkat...

I just can't help myself writing about my meerkate mate Aleksandr (again).

He just makes me smile.

Regularly.

Several times a day in fact.

I love the way he makes topical commentary AND actually responds to his fans on Twitter. I'd urge you to go and read the conversations. They never fail to make me happy. The creative team behind Aleksandr are clearly having a fabulous time and heaps of fun.

It is so lovely to see a brand which has grasped the value of dialogue with customers in building relationships.

I recently found some pretty impressive campaign results that speak for themselves too:
Read a full case study here. My car insurance is due in the next few weeks and I'll definitely be comparing the market, even if Aleksandr only compares meerkats:

Making insurance interesting...

I've worked on insurance brands. It's hard work. Insurance is a really low-interest category - something we all need for one thing or another, begrudge paying through the nose for and hope we never need to use. It's a chore. Apathy rules because there's a bewildering jungle of policies and terms to choose from. Clicks count a lot in the insurance market which is increasingly dominated by online direct sales, and where price comparison sites fight for your patience filling in quote forms.

So full marks and rounds of applause to UK insurance comparison site Compare the Market who have done a brilliant job of creating personality for a brand in a dull sector, demonstrating joined up media thinking and understanding the power of social media. For anyone outside the UK, the gist is this: CTM created a puppet meerkat (pun on typo of market), who became their figurehead and alongside his sidekick Sergei, starred in their ads which ran across a range of media platforms including TV, radio, press and online.



Then they took it one step further by creating a Facebook profile for their meerkat character, whose name is Aleksandr Orlov. He currently has just over 500k fans. People who've CHOSEN to befriend an insurance company! That's engagement for you. CTM have done a great job of illustrating how you can use social networking platforms for brand advantage. If you spend some time understanding how people use it, you can then interact in a meaningful and relevant fashion.

Aleksandr behaves just like any of your other friends, regularly publishing status updates, that are short, amusing, regularly topical or just the type of random soundbites we all share daily. He posts photos, video content just as we all do and every action is shared with his many fans.


I am more than happy to be his friend just because his humourous in-character status updates make me smile, and that's worth a lot. Linking positive sentiment with your brand has to be one of the best ways to engender engagement and long term consideration and recall.

They've understood that they can use the power of all those fans to propogate their message and increase their reach in an influential manner as any of his fans interacting with him will have that interaction broadcast out to the rest of their friends. Smart. They've recognised the value of creating seemingly specific content for the platform - last week Aleksandr was talking about his forthcoming new video bloopers content following the release of a recent tv ad (also teased via his staus updates), creating anticipation and driving many views/comments when it was eventually published some days later. It's all good.

And if online success needed offline ratification to be taken seriously (it doesn't in my opinion), what more proof do you need than my friend Aleksandr securing a masthead position in the Metro (free London morning paper), and most of page 3 to himself last week.


Be his friend. Even if you don't live in the UK or ever buy insurance. He'll make you smile and that counts for a lot in my book. This is one of the best examples I have come across of brands making social media work for them really well, without it feeling clumsy or contrived.

If it can be done for insurance, surely the field of opportunity is wide open?