Confused.com hit the TV hard in the post-Christmas land grab for Car Insurance and Car Insurance Comparison sites. Their new interface was the focus for the ads, rather than the frankly irritating cartoon world type ads they'd previously used for what seems like an eternity.
In the shadow of the positive feeling and perception of Compare the Market following the Comparethemeerkat.com ads, Confucius has popped up.
Confucius - The New Aleksandr?Given how keen Confused were to piggyback their SEM activity onto Comparethemeerkat.com keywords, even using specific creative despite the fact that searchers were after the meerkat himself rather than car insurance, they haven't done themselves any favours in terms of not appearing to have hastily rushed out an imitation.
Confucius is basically a cross between Aleksandr the Meerkat and Yoda, which bizarrely makes him look quite a lot like Chris Moyles. Yet they have still not moved away from trying to promote the values of the site, which seems much less like the brave step taken by Compare the Market and more gimmicky.
That's not to say that people won't imitate and interact with the character in the same way they have done with Aleksandr the Meerkat, although I can't find any evidence of the character on the likes of Twitter. They've also made the rather elementary error of picking a name that is already established as something else. Confused indeed.
You can see the ad and judge for yourself here:
Hmmm...It doesn't warm on me very well! Aleks the Meerkat was at least an original character with a clever pun on the company name. Yes the voice is a little Borat-like but it's not trying to imitate anything in particular. This Confucious character is clearly meant to be Yoda with a Alec Guinness Obi-Wan voice("Help find the path for you [young Skywalker]")!
ReplyDeleteAs it doesn't even focus on the character itself but mainly on "Mike" and that interface (again), it is a little lost on me.
Which idiotic, 20 year old half wit that dares to call themselves a marketeer has devised not only this visually offensive & totally unoriginal character but the non-sensical mess of a television advertisement? I hope George Lucas sues the pants off them.
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