Compare The Market
United Kingdom
Back when this ad was released, we were just coming out of the first lockdown in the UK, but things were very far from normal. The friends are socially distanced. Your grandma is wearing a mask. The football happens in empty stadiums in another country. Coming out of lockdown is slower than going in was, and that makes it weirder too.
It’s at a time like this that brands with familiar and much-loved Fluent Devices can really step forward, providing little anchors as people re-emerge into everyday life. That’s what Compare The Market have done with their beloved Meerkats characters in their new “Meerkat Music” ad.
The ad is a mix of the reassuringly familiar – Alexandr Orlov and his meerkat family, and celebrities Gary Barlow and Robbie Williams – and the strange world of quarantine: Orlov and the musicians are holding a concert that’s also a conference call. “That was weird”, says Robbie at the end. Is he talking about the reunion with his old bandmate, the socially distanced performance… or both?
What we do know as viewers is that the Meerkats and their antics belong to the comforting old world, not the weird new one. The music in the ad may be taking place on a split screen, but lockdown is just the setting of the story, not the point of it. The ad doesn’t mention “these difficult times”, it doesn’t thank any heroes, it doesn’t have any emotional aim other than to make people happy.
We’ve been saying all along in this crisis that people will respond well to entertaining ads with familiar characters. Compare The Meerkat have made one and, as predicted, viewers really enjoy it.
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