Price comparison website chooses simple over superb

How can you compete with a bellowing opera singer, a charismatic comedian and a Russian meerkat with a penchant for smoking jackets?

That was the problem facing the price comparison service Confused.com as it geared up to take on its main rivals with an ad campaign that could cut through to customers in a highly competitive market.

Could it come up with a boisterous and colourful character to rival Go Compare's exuberant tenor Gio Compario, the middle eastern haggler played by Omid Djalili for Moneysupermarket, or Aleksandr Orlov, Compare the Market's now-legendary critter?

Instead, the company, part of the Admiral insurance group, has decided to stick to a simple message about the benefits of using its price comparison service in a campaign created by Trevor Beattie's agency, BMB.

"What we have decided to do is to focus on bringing customers back to the site," Carlton Hood, Confused.com's chief executive, said.

This week the company is releasing three ads, in which consumers are confronted with luxury items they could have afforded if they had bought insurance at confused.com, the tagline being: "It pays to be Confused.com."

"It plays on this moment of regret, a character missing out on something we have put in an emotion that we felt was very real and put humour in," Hood said.

— Guardian News and Media Ltd