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by Matthew Brown and Mick McPhan (Group 14)

The key to integrated marketing success is to capture peoples attentions through a number of different mediums. These adds do not just have to be cut and paste across for example TV, Internet, Billboards but they do need to need a common theme so that people identify with the product that is being marketed.

A great way to do this is to develop a character that people associate with a brand. A cute and cuddly family of Meerkats captured the hearts and minds of people in a master ongoing marketing campaign for Compare the Market.com

Compare the Market is a business that compares insurance policies, utility plans and financial products from some of Australia’s most trusted brands.

Oleg is the latest character to enter the Meerkat family and through out the series of adds you get to see his life develop which creates a sense of us growing and bonding with the family and essentially the brand. Oleg even has his own blog.

http://www.comparethemarket.com/meerkat/blog/oleg/.

The campaign has covered TV, Online blogging, Posters, Movie adds and Meerkat toys to try to appeal to all types of potential customers. The cute Meerkats have given Compare the Market a very strong brand association with a group of characters that stick in peoples brain and also very cleverly can continue to bring new life to the ongoing campaign by adding a new member to the Meerkat adventure or sending the family on a new adventure that recaptures the publics interest in the products.

By sticking with the Meerkat family over the last 6 years has given audiences a consistency of brand image and helps to strengthen brand awareness and association as opposed to continually changing advertising themes and thus losing that relationship that has been built up between potential consumers and the brand.

If watching cute Meerkats is your thing enjoy the following 15mins of the Compare the Market Meerkat ads.

Don’t you now love Meerkats? Who is your favourite?
Isn’t this one of the cleverest integrated marketing campaigns of recent times?
Let us know your thoughts on how to take this marketing campaign further into the future?

References

http://www.smartinsights.com/traffic-building-strategy/integrated-marketing-case-studies/

http://www.comparethemarket.com/meerkat/history/

Click to access 9780170223997.pdf

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gNT1fbbTuU”

http://www.comparethemarket.com.au/?cid=ps:ga:brand:105548&gclid=CJSNp5GBhMgCFUYsvQodd1MLFA

http://www.comparethemarket.com/meerkat/blog/oleg/.

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75VpOGcotlU”

Dawn Iacobucci MM4 Student Edition