More than mere meerkats

Its nice to come out of the 'holiday season' (here’s hoping you enjoyed yours) with so many positive column inches in the business press. Though September’s historic track record is not good. As if to remind us of that, the month began with a textbook lesson in collateral damage. When even the growing and profitable lowcost airlines easyJet and Ryanair are feeling the squeeze, it was little surprise that a flick of the travel industry tail knocked Samsonite’s retail operation into Chapter 11. But it’s more timely to focus on winners. Even the good people of Lymington are embracing pound stores – much to the surprise of the Telegraph. Though as I walked the less affluent areas of Manchester this week (a bit of informal consumer research), it was noticeable that empty retail units are not snapped up so quickly when discount stores and pawnbrokers already dominate the street. The rise of the discounter may be a little over-hyped?

Another winner, on a more creative note, is the meerkat campaign for comparethemarket.com which has put the comparison sites into a panic. It’s a great campaign because it lodges the brand name firmly in the mind. All the more impressive because it is such an unprepossessing url when compared to uswitch.com or confused.com. It reminds me of the creatively great ads for outpost.com in the original dotcom boom. Though the end of that tale was that outpost.com was sold and eventually the name was dropped. A great campaign can only temporarily cover up for lack of a good strategy. I wonder if the comparison sites have learnt anything from that?

comparethemarket should be focused on turning their 15 minutes of fame into a property that is not just dependent on the quality of the next execution. Even good ideas wear out, and the most recent meerkat ad already feels as though it is going in that direction. Aleksandr Orlov has a Facebook page and YouTube bloopers (but then, don’t we all) – but they need to take this much, much further. Sponsor the zoo… Get Aleksandr a column in the Sunday Money section… They’ve probably got less time than they realise in which to do it. Googling ‘meerkat’ already returns links for both moneysupermarket and confused.

The whole category urgently need to address the challenge of establishing distinctive propositions. At the moment there’s only really a category proposition. Compare (when in Rome!) the headers of their various websites:

Compare the Market - Cheap Car Insurance
Let Compare the Market search a range of car insurance policies, to make sure you get the best deal possible.

MoneySupermarket
Compare cheap loans, mortgages and credit cards and apply online. Home & car insurance quotes.

Confused.com
Cheap car insurance, home insurance and utilities quote comparison service. Search major providers and compare quotations to find the deal for you.

uSwitch - Cheap Gas & Electricity, Car Insurance, Loans & Mortgages
Save Money on Gas & Electricity, Car Insurance, Loans, Mortgages, Broadband Providers & Credit Cards. Free & Impartial, Search Switch & Save with uSwitch.

Cost? Convenience? Features? What is it, and why is your site substantively better at it? I despair if, as seems likely, the collective response of the competitors is to re-pitch their creative work. Expecting the agency to answer the fundamental question? A step backwards to the old arms race. (Though the Peter Jones ads for moneysupermarket are certainly bad enough to warrant dropping them immediately). I’ve read several financial columns in the last week lamenting that, despite all the talk a few months back of remodelling the global financial system, the upcoming Pittsburgh G20 will basically offer us more of the same. Now the panic is subsiding, it's so much less difficult to revert to the old ways and harder to change. If that happens, the politicians and economists will have failed. If marketing continues with the old shout-and-promote model, we will have failed too.