09 Dec 10

Hitting the Jackpot - 'Simples!'

by Research Manager, Leona Provan

The autobiography of everyone’s favourite cravat-toting furry mammal is quickly becoming one of the publishing sensations of 2010. Aleksandr Orlov's ‘A Simples Life: My Life and Times’ is the latest moneymaking venture from the meerkat star of the Compare the Market TV adverts, who has singlehandedly revitalised not just a business but an entire category.

In The Sunday Times last weekend, Orlov’s autobiography sat top of their non-fiction bestsellers, having sold 32,875 copies in hardback that week alone. Philip Stone, charts editor at The Bookseller, said last week: “It’s now likely this meerkat will have the biggest selling celebrity memoir of 2010.”

And let’s not forget, Orlov – despite the ornate family history detailed in A Simples Life (ancestors struggling through the Kalahri, the meerkat-mongoose war of 1728 and his glory days of making a mint – as summarised by The Independent) – was dreamt up by ad men less than two years ago to help a flagging internet insurance site flog more quotes.

First seen in January 2009, the adverts see Orlov chiding customers for confusing his Compare the Meerkat website with Compare the Market, which sells insurance, energy and mobile phone tariffs. Since the adverts first aired, Compare the Market's owner, BGL, has been laughing all the way to the bank. Site visits have risen from 50,000 a month three years ago to more than 2 million a month today. It is now one of the top three price comparison sites, with 25 per cent of the market.

BGL has not disclosed how much money Orlov has made. However, in June it announced a 16 per cent jump in profits – a rise of £9.92m – which it said had been "largely driven" by Compare the Market's growth. And that was before his autobiography was published.

With 770,000 friends on Facebook, 700,000 subscribers to his iPhone app (iSimples) and more than 44,000 followers on Twitter, Orlov is also master of social networking. Is there nothing this meerkat can’t do?

His catchphrase “simples” crops up everywhere, being banded about by the children on the hit sitcom The Inbetweeners and repeated by the likes of Davina McCall. The BBC News website even nominated it as a “word of the decade”, and in October it was included in the latest edition of the Collins English Dictionary.

Mark Choueke, editor of Marketing Week, believes the brand has been shrewd. “Brands have realised they need to stop making ads and hoping for the best,” he said. “What Compare the Market got right very early on was they made an essentially boring product fun.” Their brand awareness is said to have tripled.

It appears that Orlov has bewitched everyone from toddlers to grannies in a way the Crazy Frog could only dream of. Simples.