Comparethemarket’s beloved ads featuring Aleksandr Orlov, the eccentric Russian billionaire meerkat and his tea-making sidekick Sergei have turned the insurance comparison company into a household name.But the company has now reviewed its media strategy to make sure the ads did not appear around news content on the Ukrainian conflict.“Like the rest of the world, we are shocked by the events in Ukraine,” said a spokesperson from the company. “The meerkat characters are entirely fictional and have been used by the company since its inception since 2012. They obviously have no connection to the current situation.”A spokesperson from the Australian arm of the company went on to say that as the audience is different in Australia than in the UK, there are different ads used.“We will continue to carefully consider and review the situation.”The Comparethemeerkat advertising campaign has been a continued success, inspiring a line of soft toys and a book entitled ‘A Simples Life: The Life and Times of Aleksandr Orlov’. It was also responsible for taking Comparethemarket from one of the least know insurance comparison companies to the best known within a year of the ad’s release.Orlov’s signature catchphrase “simples” became so popular that it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2019, meaning “used to convey something that is very straightforward”.This is not the first time firms have been conflicted about associations with Russia since the conflict began. Last week supermarkets in the UK came under pressure from shoppers on social media to rename the classic ‘chicken Kiev’ to the Ukrainian spelling of ‘chicken Kyiv’. ‘Kiev’ is derived from the Russian spelling.
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