Ads for Car Insurance

One large cost is the constant need to regularly top up with petrol and the costs per litre keep going higher and higher at the amount. Other vehicle related costs include MOT and repairs and also insurance for the car. Car insurance is very important in case you have an accident on the road and course someone to suffer a personal injury. Lucky for us there are many adverts on television advertising websites that allow you to compare different providers as well as others that offer insurance direct. Companies come up with all different types of marketing campaigns to make sure that theirs is the one that you use for your car insurance. Here's a look at the different campaigns and characters that different companies utilise to advertise their services.

Compare the Market

Compare the Market struck gold with their 'Compare the Meerkat' advertising campaign which started in 2009 and introduced the world to Aleksandr Orlov and started a weird fascination with meekats. Based on the idea that he was fed up with people coming to his meerkat comparing website looking for car insurance, the advert follows Aleksandr as he informs the public of the difference between the two sites. There have been a whole series of adverts introducing other meerkats such as Sergei, Aleksandr's IT technician, the village of Meerkovo and an epic series detailing the history of the Orlov family. Last year they even started offering plush toys of the meerkets to people that bought car insurance through the site and this marketing campaign is still going strong today.

Go Compare

From the middle of 2009, Go Compare have been using a musical based advertising campaign featuring a fictional Opera singing character by the name of Gio Compario (see what they did there), who sings about the benefits of using Go Bompare. The song used is based on the classic George M. Cohan song "Over There" and there have been a number of themed adverts including prehistoric, space, Robin Hood and deserted island based adverts. The advert is successful in getting the name of the brand out there but the adverts themselves were ranked the most irritating advertising campaign of both 2009 and 2010.

Confused

Confused.com is the longest running of the car insurance comparison sites and so has been through a number of different campaigns. The most recent version though is another musical campaign that features an animated version of the Confused.com mascot singing the Queen song "Somebody to Love" and another shortly followed that featured Diana Ross' "Chain Reaction". These campaigns have been deemed a success for the company, much better than their previous one that featured a Yoda-esq puppet named Confucius!

Direct Line

Not all car insurance sites are comparison sites and Direct Line are proud to offer their services direct to customers. They have a very icon logo which is a red telephone on wheels and when people started buying insurance products online they introduced a red mouse on wheels. The phone was voiced by Stephen Fry which gave the adverts a very British feel to them.

Churchill

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the talking, nodding Chruchill dog since he has been the mascot for the company since 1994 when he first appeared as a real dog. He was then replaced with a toy nodding dog was then used which were available for fans of the dog to purchase. The toy dog has since been replaced with a computer generated version but one thing that has stayed ever present is his famous "oh yes" catchphrase. The adverts used today include actor Martin Clunes who discusses insurance with Churchill the dog.