Who’s your business story Meerkat?

I have written before about telling the story of your business to use in your content marketing and to build your brand.

But what if you don’t feel inspired? What if there’s nothing that special about your business?

(Ahem – I bet I could find something by the way – every business has a story to tell.)

But for the sake of this blog post – what if, in your humble opinion, your business really is dull?

Then why not take a leaf out of the book of BISL Limited?

You’ve probably never heard of them, but you will have heard about their product – and you will be familiar with the characters promoting them.

Comparethemarket and comparethemeerkat.com are trading names of BISL Limited.  Aleksandr, Maiya, Oleg and Sergei are some of the cute little furry Meerkats-in-drag who feature in their ads and mini-movies.

In fact BISL’s latest promotional tool, alongside their Meerkat Toys, is to offer 2 for 1 cinema tickets to customers buying their insurance through comparethemarket. To accompany the campaign lucky old Aleksandr is conducting interviews with major Hollywood superstars.

It boggles the mind. BISL have made a remarkable shift from insurance broker to movie-maker. They have a growing cast of characters, a catchphrase which reflects their service, and a cross-generational appeal.

It’s genius. And it does demonstrate an important truth about your business story: it can be completely made up.

It intrigues me how the Meerkat idea came about. Maybe some ad creative who could do a dodgey accent was trying to spice up a boring grey meeting with insurance specialists? If so, lucky they got the joke.

Or maybe it was a brain-storm idea that got rescued from the cutting-room floor. A classic example of not throwing out the baby with the bath-water.

Business owners don’t always have to be super-heroes, but they can be creative with their brand and make up the stories as they go.

So who’s the Meerkat in your business story? What’s the Avatar of your business? And how does it reflect your commercial ethos and values?

Your business does have a story. So tell it.

Simples.