Powering Compare the Market’s Pet Insurance Rankings 100+ Links Earned with Digital PR

Compare the Market is the UK’s favourite price comparison website, helping consumers to find the best deals on a variety of insurance and financial products. You’ll know them for their lovable meerkat mascots; Aleksandr, Sergei, Oleg, Maiya, Bogdan, Vassily and Yakov.

We were appointed by Compare the Market in mid-2018 as their digital PR agency and given a brief to earn high authority links to drive growth for the brand across their pet insurance product.

From previous experience, we knew that pet campaigns had the potential to perform very well, yet in order to do so, there was a real need to be able to hook to multiple segments of the media. Pet-focussed publications alone weren’t going to cut it in terms of earning great links at scale, and we’d need to be able to land coverage and links from lifestyle journalists, too.

That meant we needed to launch a campaign that had wide appeal and that also helped place the brand in front of their target audience; pet owners and animal lovers.

The campaign’s target was to earn links from a minimum of 10 unique domains.

You’ve probably heard of the Forbes Rich List and the Sunday Times Rich List.

These annual rankings of the richest individuals are always a big hit with the press, and our ideation process saw us land on the concept of launching the Pet Rich List for Compare the Market.

With a brief to earn topically relevant and high authority links to support the growth of the brand’s pet insurance product, this felt like the perfect way to drive success.

But hang on a moment, rich pets?!

Who wouldn’t want to find out about the world’s richest pets?

The 2018 Pet Rich List revealed and ranked the animals worth millions; from Gunther IV, the German Shepherd worth $375 million to Taylor Swift’s Scottish Fold cat, Olivia Benson.

The campaign allowed us to play into the brand’s fun side, in-line with their meerkat mascots, and launch a campaign that made people smile.

To date, The 2018 Pet Rich List has earned 100 links from 65 referring domains:

This includes earned links and coverage from top-tier publications including CBS News, Metro, Country Living, MTV, Elle and more.

In fact, the campaign enjoyed two peaks of success, with our PR team pitching the story out as a reactive piece following the sad death of Karl Lagerfeld and the rise of his cat, Choupette, into a higher position on the Pet Rich List.

We’re firm believers that, to earn quality links at scale, there needs to be a surprising story.

And this campaign delivered just that.

Seeing a headline that the world’s richest animal is a dog worth $375 million or even that there’s a chicken with $15 million to their name is shocking, surprising and somewhat absurd!

But that’s the exact reason why this campaign outperformed it’s target KPI by 10x.