It pays to be cute. The meerkat, subject of the Compare the Market television commercials draw something like 1600% more charitable donations than the face-only-a-mother-could-love manatee. The whole Compare the Market campaign has been handled superbly, bring buzz to what is, in essence, just another very boring insurance comparison site.

I'll be honest and say that if I was sitting in on the Meerkat pitch, I would've said the Meerkat has nothing to do with insurance and to try another concept.The dairy industry has gone along with using cows in advertising as the cute and dosile animal for a long time, with varying degrees of success for the respective brands.

Two of the better recent examples include the Müller Corner "Thankyou Cows" advertisement and the Anchor Butter "Made by Cows" advertisement.

Let's take a closer look at both.....

   VS  

Best For The Brand

Winner: Anchor

Anchor's last execution involved an animated cow jumping a farm fence, Great Escape style, so this new, light-hearted look at butter production isn't that much of a departure from their older marketing messages. By contrast, Müller have done TVC's with things like old film footage set to dance music and a fairly standard ad of folks in different scenes eating yoghurt, with each 'folding' into the next. OK I guess, but not much continuity...

Best Art Direction and Production

Winner: Both

A mind boggling amount of clever details have gone into the Anchor ad; my favourite being the grass vending machine, but I do love the simplicity and production values of the Müller commercial.

Best Concept

Winner: Anchor

Animals making a product in a human manner isn't a necessarily new concept, but the details and fun angle that Anchor have taken make the concept pretty strong. In saying that, I really like the idea of spinning around the cute-cow thing and making it look like a horse in a beer ad. Müller would have won this category if I had not seen this Jalna Cow ad from 4 years . A bit too similar for my liking.

Overall Winner? The Anchor cows.

The prize this week is a patch of grass, must be collected in person (or in bovine) from the Neo Marketing office at Charing Cross, between 9:13am and 9:15am on Tuesday the 31st.