Whether marketing gimmicks work or not, you cannot argue about the visual success of Alexander the Meerkat. However, given that Compare the Market is a online price comparison site it is clear their goal should be around increasing traffic and getting consumers to use the site for longer.
As much as the campaign has created a face for Compare the Market, I was thinking as to whether this has actually created a sizeable difference to site usage. I timed how long it took to complete an application across MoneySupermarket and Compare the Market (approximately 3mins was the average on both). I then took this average and looked at the latest trend figures from Comscore Media Metrics between November 2008 and November 2009. (Thank you Charlie Lockett – @charlielockett)
Media Total Visits (000) Average Minutes per Visit
Media Nov-2008 Nov-2009 % Change Nov-2008 Nov-2009 % Change
Total Internet : Total Audience 1,964,709 2,467,330 26 33.5 32.0 -4.4
MONEYSUPERMARKET.COM 6,669 3,907 -41 4.3 5.4 27.0
COMPARETHEMARKET.COM 329 936 184 0.9 0.7 -15.8
What seems clear to me is that brands need to start thinking about the effect on dwell time, not just volume. The effect on volume is clear from the Compare the Meerkat/Market campaign, yet disturbingly for the brand, people are spending less time on the site. VCCP would probably say that the combined dwell of consumers viewing the Meerkat across YouTube and Facebook equated to the time consumers spend on the MoneySupermarket site, but commercially it just doesn’t seem to have worked.
