Go Compare
I don’t watch a great deal of TV, but I’m fairly sure that this is the country’s most hated ad campaign:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvqzx1bA488
(That’s actually my favourite execution because it has subtitles. What the fuck for? And if you look on the YouTube page, the fat cunt singer actually has a name: Gio Compario. What a cunt. By the way, the giant fat cunt also has a blog, along with his own website. Cunt.)
But…
I think it’s probably also the country’s most famous ad campaign. Here’s a little bit of evidence:
some other company's 6-sheet, Camden, 3-10-10
Like Esure, it really has entered the national psyche, and alas, alas, a-fucking-las, I’m sure the people responsible are just stoked to the hilt.But then the real problem is that it’s just one more irritating sore of a campaign that is also very successful. That means that more of these kinds of campaign will be made and we’ll all have to suffer just a but more.
And that throws up two unanswerable questions:
Why does this kind of shit ‘work’? (There are plenty of other campaigns, good and shit, high and low media frequency, that fall flat on their faces and certainly don’t have people graffiti-ing other people’s advertising. Why is this one – and Esure – so famous?)
Why, if you had even the dimmest 0.000000000000000000000000000000000176 watt light shining from the depths of your soul, would you ever want to besmirch the collective cultural landscape like this? It’s literally like taking big buckets of shit and smearing them over all the walls of the UK until we submit and say, ‘Yes, we remember that you are the people who smear shit all over the place and do something else that we don’t really care about’.
Could everyone involved please Go Compare their genitalia to a circular saw, really, really closely, in the dark, while paralytically drunk.
PS: and it’s ‘thank your LUCKY stars’, you twats.
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oh my god. Have they used SAND as the font?
People like this campaign in the same way they like the Venga Boys, Timmy Mallet and Eastenders.
A section of the nation loves shite.
Oh, and the picture of the 6-sheet is big so that the Go Compare bit (and isn’t it odd that it says ‘Go Compare.com’?) is legible.
It’s a Chris Wilkins job. He’s mates with Peter Wood who founded Direct Line and Davis Wilkins did the ads. Evidently, they worked, so he’s done all the other Peter Wood startups like eSure and Privilege. Fuck that floaty, folky, ‘visual conversation’ shit that runs across EMEA, it’s selling a necessary service to suburbia. You might think that John Webster’s former writing partner might want to do better work, but then nobody wants to wind up like Geoff Seymour, do they?
You think that’s bad? The new execution, set in an Egyptian tomb, features Gio doing the sand dance… And more subtitles so you can sing along, karaoke style!
That title is under threat from WeBuyAnyCar.Cunts
Isn’t this simply Jingle advertising?
Go Compare
Washing Machine’s Live Longer With Calgon
We Buy Any Car.com
If You Like A Lot of Chocolate In Your Biscuit, Join Our Club
Do the Shake ‘n’ Vac, and put the freshness back
Um Bongo Um Bongo
The top 3 are jingle based, and they made the client a fortune. The songs are pretty annoying, but incredibly effective, in so much as they get right into your head, and you have to force yourself to stop humming them to yourself.
So what’s the difference between the top 3 in this list, and those that follow?
Oh – and R Whites lemonade…… Genius.
The fact that the graffiti bothers to include the ‘.com’ suggests that it mightn’t have done by a punter.
I know – sounds ludicrous doesn’t it. Paying people to go out with an indelible pen to scribble on other brands’ posters.
But if clients are wicked enough to pay ‘seeders’ to infiltrate blogs……
In a room I notice two people. The prettiest girl and the ugliest girl.
This is the ugliest girl. It stands out. All those technically good ads with no copy and beautiful direction are like the okay girls that probably have boyfriends and all dress the same. They all aspire to be the prettiest. But only the prettiest is the prettiest.
Fuck, this is an awful explanation.
I would say it has personality. And that’s something British advertising doesn’t have enough of. The problem is, its personality is a twat.
also, the one when his helicopter moustache makes him fly makes me laugh.
if helicopter moustache making fat man fly doesn’t make you laugh, then you take life too seriously.
It’s all Compare the Meercunt’s fault. They raised the bar in the field of “I don’t care what anyone takes out of this ad as long as they remember our name” briefs.
I imagine this was a direct result of the “success” of that campaign.
I’m torn: on one level getting anyone to remember anything from an ad could be viewed as a success. On the other hand, just remembering a company name and that there’s a fat opera singer involved doesn’t make anyone any more likely to use the product.
This was clearly a reaction (a scared, panicked reaction) to compare the Meerkat. I always thought they should have done “Goat Compare.”
outpost.com
i remember their name.
similar tactic, but award winning.
Or ‘Go Camp Hare!’ where a clearly gay rabbit thing is encouraged to take life by the scruff of the neck. I’ll get my coat.
G-L’s is the real point here. You can achieve the effect you are looking for in a way that is neither crass, loud, annoying, bovine, irritating or patronising. So when your ad is all those things you have simply been a shitcake for the sake of it.
What’s worse though? An ad that is blatantly shit – so bad that’s is actually kinda good and everyone remembers it. Or an ad that tries to be all colourful and quirky with a folky soundtrack that no-one ever remembers or relates.
I just emailed a bunch of my football mates. A more rank and file collection of hoi polloi you’d do well to assemble. None of them have every heard of outpost.com. Not one.
They have all heard of Go Compare.
@ Time Machine
Car Insurance (any insurance?) can only be bought by over 18’s. Whilst chocolate biscuits and cartons of fruit juice….
I think that makes a big difference. You are closer to the money with Shake’nVac. But I think that had a crassness born of naivety. GC is the bastard son of Esure and Sheila’s Wheels. Hardly a ‘one off’.
Gio: the first one.
Anonymouse: I can’t tell if you’re being serious, so I’ll just say that the Outpost campaign is 12 years old and American.
;D
not serious
GC is the bastard son of Esure and Sheila’s Wheels. Hardly a ‘one off’.
Again, both the work of Chris Wilkins and Sian Vickers, at the request of Peter ‘Direct Line’ Wood.
ben
hope you are going to go on Gio’s blog and tell him he’s fat cunt.
here is the link to save you looking again
http://www.giocompario.com/
best
o’d
sorry ben
typical art director
left out ‘a’ just before ‘fat cunt’.
do apologize.
o’d
what gullible prick i am!
just fallen in.
it’s not really gio’s site. the real singing person that is. it’s on for the real gocompare firm. (by the way i have to admit i fell for the one with the russian rat thing in.)
actually thought the singer had his own site!!
see us old blokes don’t know how digital works.
how does it by the way?
anyone know out there?
o’d
p.s. next thing someones going to tell me that gio isn’t really italian and only pretending to be.
In the aggregator marketplace, there is pretty much 0% differentiation in terms of the service provided competitor to competitor. They also deal in an utterly low interest marketplace (when was the last time you got really, really excited about sorting your car insurance?). The aim of the game for these guys is making sure they are top of your mind when you finally sit down for the once a year premium check. They do this by battering us every week with insane jingles, crazy icons and a metric shit ton of ratings. But does this really make them bad? (I’ll give you deeply annoying though!) At what point did advertising take on the responsibility to enhance the cultural landscape? I thought advertising was supposed to help client’s businesses grow, not compete with Tracey Emin?
The radio ads are more annoying with the shit Harry Hills sound alike doing a vo with the singing guy
@The Persuader: I buy your argument, but the meerkat proves you can at least do it with charm and craft. Not like this utter shit.
I heard the people that made smash martians made go compare man. No seriously
The general public likes easy stuff to understand while they scoff their dominos while watching x-factor. They don’t give a shit about clever or craft.
Just the other day i was with a mate who is a boring as hell solicitor, i asked what’s your favourite ad at the moment. He said maccy d’s.
Oh right i thought, he must be talking about the one with the poem, but no that’s to boring he thought the one where the woman falls asleep on the buss and bumps her head on the bell is the funniest thing ever. Just goes to show people just want pure and simple ‘my family’ ‘michael macintyre’ everyman funny.
JohnO’D,
Don’tmiss out, great offer on Depends down at Tesco this week.
Ciaran
@ Anonymous 11.07pm: Smash Martians, Hoffmeister Bear, Meerkat, Cresta Bear. etc etc. All ‘everyman funny’, all memorable, all effective. McD’s breakfast spots are mildly amusing and done with charm. Go Compare is just annoying. Would it have been any more expensive or less effective to produce something with a bit of class that would do the same job? No.
You old blokes from the glory days can perform a valuable service teaching us how to wear fair-isle tank tops, grow hair badly and perfect the thousand yard stare pose with arms folded (all D+AD winners 1973-78). Imagine what someone would pay for one of Neil Godfrey’s authenticated jumpers or Colin Millward’s cardigans.
@ Mr. Positive – It would be less effective. The idiocy of the ads is what makes them memorable.
Google insights allows you to look at the voulme of specific search terms (stay with me, it gets better*) across a given time period. It’s free, you should try it, because it is a great way to get a feel for whether people in the real world are actually discussing and ad or brand.
Anyway, comparethemarket shows a significant spike in searches around the time the first ad broke, which has gradually eroded over time to go back to where it was. GoCompare on the other hand, shows a massive spike in searches when each ad is released, with a continuous build in volume over time.
That said, searches for “Meerkat” go off the scale from the time of the first ad and remain strong.
So Gio is adding real value to the business, Compare the Meerkat has done a great job for the meerkat industry.
Make of that what you will.
*yeah, that was a lie. Sorry.
I always liked Peter Wood’s put down;
“The advertising people who complain about my adverts always seem to have fewer helicopters than I have.”
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When I tell a friend of mine that I think something is crap, he reponds way to often with, “it’s shitness is it’s strength.” Is that the case here with Gio?
–
Is advertising a stick rattling in a swill bin after all? (can’t remember who said it was, but not me)
It was George Orwell.