You know that ad on TV, that features the puppet meerkat?
The one that a lot of kids love and a lot of adults hate and that has lead to hate mail from the educational establishment because of the catchphrase “simples” allegedly corrupting the English language?
Well, for those of us who may have thought it was a lot of fuss about nothing, news that the marketshare of comparethemarket.com has increased by 76% and the traffic to their website by 83% will come as a bit of a shock.
But not half as much of a shock as it’s come to their competitors such as moneysupermarket.com, whose campaign that started in June featuring Peter Jones from Dragons Den, has been completely trounced.
OK, it can be argued that recession or not people still need to insure their cars so this is a straight fight for share of a pie that remains pretty much intact from before the chaps in the red braces lost all of our money – yes, this can be argued but to do so, in our view, would be to miss the main points.
The first one is that Google and other search engines are not the be all and end all in driving traffic to your website.
The second is that it’s possible to increase your sales in a recession but this has to be at the expense of your competitors – like the meerkat, you have to get out there and compete even harder and this means by spending money on advertising which includes shows.
Simples!