Why It Works: How two meerkats made insurance memorable

Do you know a meerkat named Aleksandr? My guess is that you do.

Compare the Market aired their first meerkat ad in 2009, when Aleksandr Orlov pointed out that his website comparethemeerkat.com was not the place to find a car insurance deal — that would be comparethemarket.com. For 15 years — and counting — the cute furry characters have been delighting us during ad breaks, maybe even delaying the moment we pop out to put the kettle on.

We’ve had the joy of watching them chat with Nicole Kidman and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and team up with some huge Hollywood franchises like Batman and Frozen. There’s even been a range of limited edition collectible plush toys available too.

It’s worked incredibly well. Before the meerkats, Compare the Market was fourth in a category of four. Now, according to GlobalData’s 2022 UK Insurance Consumer Survey, they are the number one price comparison website for motor insurance, with a 54.5% market share.

Why have these characters so effectively fixed Compare the Market in consumer minds?

Fluent devices: fancy name, simple(s) idea

The lovable meerkats that we know so well act as ‘fluent devices’ that help to anchor a brand. This term was first described by Orlando Wood at research agency System1 as:

A fictitious character or characters (humans or creatures) created by the brand and used as the primary vehicle for the drama in more than one ad across a campaign.

Think Tony the Tiger for Frosties, the Jolly Green Giant for Green Giant Sweetcorn or the geeky runners for 118 118 directory enquiries. These characters become instantly recognisable and closely linked with the brand. And, as an advertising approach, it works.

Compare the Market creates customer and brand chief roles in marketing restructureIn 2019, System1 analysed all the long-term campaigns in the IPA Databank since 1998, and compared those that used a character-based fluent device with those that did not.

There was a clear difference. It found 40.9% of campaigns that featured a character fluent device achieved a very large impact on market share gain versus just 29.7% of those without. It equates to a substantial difference.

Additionally, the use of character devices increased the number of new customers and profit, and reduced price sensitivity compared to campaigns that did not use them.

Of course, we can’t argue that the character device alone accounts for the difference. But it’s a compelling hypothesis.

Why do they work?

As well as turning ads into entertainment, character-based fluent devices are effective because they harness an important behavioural bias: concreteness.

Fields such as finance and technology are at risk of sounding, not only dry and boring, but completely abstract. Ears rarely prick up at the word ‘insurance’ — it doesn’t give your brain an image to latch on to.

That’s where concreteness becomes useful. Harnessing the power of concrete language and using more powerful words allows us to create a picture in our mind’s eye. The original study examining this phenomenon came from Ian Begg at the University of Western Ontario in 1972.

He read out a series of twenty phrases to participants. Some phrases were concrete, like ‘white horse’, others were abstract, like ‘basic theory’. You can see a selection below.

Concrete phrases	Abstract phrases
White horse	Subtle fault
Muscular gentleman	Common fate
Young mother	Rational method
Hungry prisoner	Particular soul
Round temple	Basic theory

Phrases used in Begg’s (1972) study

A short time after hearing the phrases, Begg asked people to recall as many as they could.

Overall, people remembered just 9% of the abstract words. But they recalled 36% of the concrete words — a fourfold difference.

Begg suggests that concrete phrases are more memorable than abstract ones because they feature things that can be visualised. Being able to imagine a muscular gentleman is possible, picturing a common fate is not. And, Begg argues, vision is the sense that most powerfully boosts memorability.

Study finds ad effectiveness does not ‘wear-out’ over timeAnd that’s where the meerkats come in. Compare the Market had the challenge of making price comparison sound first, interesting, and second, memorable. Not an easy ask — few of us relish the prospect of researching insurance options.

But by creating emotionally engaging and amusing characters, they succeeded. We can recall Aleksandr in his dressing gown, or baby Oleg in his crib. We think of the word meerkat, and this makes it possible to recall Compare the Market.

Where are all the characters?

Despite the effectiveness of fluent devices, far fewer advertisers use them than in the past. According to System1, only 4% of ads in the US and 7% in Britain use them. Back in the early 1990s, the heyday of TV ad characters, almost half of ads (41%) in the UK were using fluent devices.

What does this mean for you? Well, there’s a real opportunity right now. These ads work; few people are harnessing that effectiveness. So why not stand out by creating some animated personalities? Especially if you’re dealing with abstract products or services.

Audiences will love getting to know new characters — like Alexandr Orlov — as you develop their stories. And you’ll help to give them something to wrap their imagination around, bringing your brand easily to mind.