Audience Reception

The text is an advert for price comparison website Compare the Market. It features different CGI meerkats with the main meerkat being the owner of a fictitious meerkat comparison website named Compare the Meerkat. The aim of the advert is to convince the audience to compare prices for different insurance and financial services via their website.

The target audience is The Mainstream because the adverts contain several features that are required by this audience. Firstly, the Compare the Meerkat campaign has been running continuously since 2009 so this appeals to the need of the audience to have brand security and familiarity. Also, the whole purpose of Compare the Market is to get the insurance or financial service you want for the best price possible by comparing prices with different providers in the industry. This value for money is a requirement of The Mainstream audience. Lastly, the Compare the Meerkat campaign has become a family brand, another requirement of the Mainstream audience. It has become a family brand due to it's emphasis of free cuddly toys which appeals to the younger members of a Mainstream audience members household, as well as its mission to save money - a value of any Mainstream member.

If the audience were to take a preferred reading of the Compare the Meerkat advert, they would still agree with the ideology that ‘saving money is important’ but they would disagree with the idea that comparison websites will get you the best deal when I comes to insurance policy. They would believe that they would get a better deal on an insurance policy if they went directly to an insurance company rather than via a comparison website such as Compare the Meerkat, however they would agree that comparison websites do provide a basic representation of the prices that different insurance companies charge. The audience would agree that a reward for using their service would be appreciated – especially for audience members who have children who would enjoy the toy, however audience members who don’t have children would see the reward of a child’s toy quite pointless.

If the audience were to take an Oppositional reading of the Advert, they would disagree with the ideology that ‘saving money is important’ and instead believe that getting the best service or most comprehensive cover from an insurance policy is much more important. They would also agree that they would get a better deal if they went directly to an insurance company, like the audience who took a preferred reading. They would completely disagree with the idea of the cuddly toy as a reward for using their service as well as the humorous and childlike, cartoon-style adverts, believing in the idea the insurance policies are serious investments. The policy you eventually choose will differ on the cover that it gives you. Therefore the audience would believe that using a humorous service that deals with the serious issue such as insurance would be inappropriate.