This is top creativity. ‘Simples!’

The creative lads behind this campaign deserve a big pat on the back. The client also, deserve some kudos.

I belong to the school of thought that expects wittiness from communication, in addition to informing and entertaining.

Now in the UK, it’s become very fashionable to end your summations with the word ‘simples’. That has been made popular by this insanely humorous ads featuring Aleksandr, the Russian meerkat.

This ad uses the cultural idiosyncracies as creative tool to get it’s message across wittily in a monotonously cluttered product category. It masterly brought together the knowledge of a host of variables which includes – wildlife {meerkats}, Language {Russian-accented English} culture {regional names} to make a fine creative mix.

The adverts focus on the meerkat’s president’s annoyance at people confusing comparethemeerkat.com and comparethemarket.com. as it’s creative leeway.

This ad was very successful it had almost half a million people watching it on youtube in the first 3 months of its launch.

And way before the creative awards season, the floodgates of other acknowledgement have opened. It recently won the Marketing Initiative of the Year Award hosted by Post Magazine and comedian Dara O’Briain. 1,800 of the industry’s leading professionals were at the Royal Albert Hall to honour the initiative.

comparethemarket.com’s managing director, Kal Samra, stated she was absolutely thrilled to have won the award, and went on to say that it was a reward for a new and innovative approach.

This is the kind of ad i see an ‘wished i was behind it’. Now it has spurned thousands of twitter followers and it’s jingles are being used as ringtones more ads have been spurned from the same character.

If you take the Jekyll and Hyde kind of relationship between Great Britain and Russia into consideration, you’s understand the brilliance of the ‘tongue-in-cheekiness’ of this ad. It’d be nice to have a scenario where the always glum-faced Gordon Brown plays this to Medyedev.

And out of the over 180 different world nationalities residing in the UK, to bring out the beauty in the Babushka Russian interpretation is good for a change from the ubiquitous Jamaican Patois.

watch the Blooper, the comic version of the ad released for viral effect online below to enjoy the language play. You do hear that from on the tube or in the bus from the large Eastern European community in London!

These guys did there homework well. They didn’t allow the comparethemeerkat.com variable fallow. It was the fulcrum of the creative idea and i love what they did to it in real life. They actually set up a website for it and made it work nicely as a sidekick for the main brand website.

check it out on http://www.comparethemeerkat.com/home. And the monopoly of the meerkat idea universe was completed by the spoof site www.comparethemeercat.com in case you type in the wrong stuff into te search engine!

I remember how this kind of language/cultural idiosyncractic idea was rejected after production by one of the biggest banks in Nigeria. The excuse was it wouldn’t cut across the cultural divide! Duh!

So we keep ignoring a whole mine of creative possibilities due to the myopic views of some brand managers. Nothing personal. ‘Simples!’.

Watch out for this ad in the DA&D, and Cannes!