Go.Compare

Last updated

GoCompare.com Ltd.
Go.Compare
Company type Limited company
Industry Price comparison
FoundedNovember 2006
FounderHayley Parsons
Headquarters Newport, Wales, UK
Area served
 United Kingdom
Key people
 Sir Peter Wood (Chairman)
Matthew Crummack (CEO)
Services Financial services
Revenue £142.1 million (2016) [1]
£21.9 million (2016) [1]
£15.8 million (2016) [1]
Parent Future plc
Website www.gocompare.com OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

GoCompare.com Limited, trading as Go.Compare (formerly GoCompare from 2017 until 2022, and GoCompare.com until 2017, styled as GO.COMPARE) is a Welsh financial services comparison company based in Cardiff, Wales. Its website provides comparison details for financial products including car insurance, home and pet insurance and breakdown cover. Since 2021 it has been owned by Future plc. [2] The company's advertising campaign in 2015 was voted as the "most irritating advertisement."

Contents

History

Go Compare was established in November 2006 and is based in Newport, Wales. The company's founder was Hayley Parsons, who worked for Admiral Insurance for 14 years, [3] and was formerly head of business development at Confused.com. [4] Parsons was replaced as CEO by Jon Morrell following a takeover by insurance company esure in March 2015 [3]

It was the first comparison site to focus on features of insurance products rather than just listing prices, [5] which led to the company being invited to become a member of the British Insurance Brokers Association (BIBA). [6]

The company, which at the time was 49% owned by insurance company esure, posted a pre-tax profit of £34.7 million for 2011, up 15% on the previous year. [3]

On 8 December 2014, esure acquired Go Compare in a deal worth £95 million. [7] In November 2016 the company was the subject of a demerger from esure. [8]

In November 2017, ZPG's offer to buy the company for £460 million was rejected. [9]

In December 2017, GoCompare announced the acquisition of MyVoucherCodes, one of the UK's largest online voucher code sites, in a £36.5m deal. [10]

In November 2020, GoCompare agreed to a £594m takeover offer from Future plc, Britain’s biggest magazines publisher. [11]

Services

GoCompare provides a comparison service for vehicle, life insurance in conjunction with its partners Neilson Financial Services, [12] home and pet insurance, and breakdown cover. It also provides comparison services for travel insurance, gas and electricity, broadband, loans, credit cards, mortgages and other financial products through preferred providers such as Energylinx and Experian. On 14 August 2012, the company launched "Covered mag", an online magazine that claims to be "unlike any other financial publication you've ever read". [13]

Advertising

In June 2009 the company launched an advertising campaign featuring a fictional Italian tenor called Gio Compario, played by Wynne Evans. [14] The advertisements feature 'Gio' singing about the company to the tune of "Over There" in various locations. In 2015, the campaign was voted the UK's "most irritating advertisement". [15]

In response to this reaction, Go Compare deliberately subverted the campaign in July 2012 by running a series of adverts where celebrity guests such as Sue Barker, Jimmy Carr, Stuart Pearce, Ray Mears, Louie Spence and Stephen Hawking lined up to "silence" the character of Gio Compario. Marketing officer Kevin Hughes said, "It was risky, but a brand has to listen to its customers." [16] The character returned in July 2015 after an 18-month break, singing as part of what Evans called a "much calmer performance". [17] The character appeared again in 2020 after coronavirus lockdown measures were eased in the UK in July 2020. [18]

Public image

In September 2007 the company admitted that, on one occasion, an unlawful breach of privacy had taken place with regard to the passing on of data provided by customers. It said that this was the result of a breach of contract by a sub-contractor, Performance Direct, and stated that it would take immediate action to prevent it happening again. [19]

In January 2008 the site was blacklisted for a time by Google due to "irregular inbound links". This resulted in its share of search traffic for the term "car insurance" reducing from 17.49% to 2.31%. [20] Gocompare.com was blacklisted again in April 2009. [21]

In August 2019 the company received criticism from road safety organisations after debuting an advert depicting the Gio Compario character crashing into a tree and flipping over. [22] The Advertising Standards Authority received over 70 complaints regarding the advertisement. [23]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Television advertisement</span> Paid commercial segment on television

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Schweppes</span> Soft drink brand used by companies such as Coca-Cola, Suntory, etc

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alliance & Leicester</span> Defunct British bank

Alliance & Leicester plc was a British bank and former building society, formed by the merger in 1985 of the Alliance Building Society and the Leicester Building Society. The business demutualised in the middle of 1997, when it was floated on the London Stock Exchange. It was listed in the FTSE 250 Index, and had been listed in the FTSE 100 Index from April 1997 until June 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Future plc</span> British publishing company

Future plc is a British publishing company. It was started in 1985 by Chris Anderson. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Smash Martians</span>

The Smash Martians were the stars of a series of 1970s and early 1980s TV advertising campaigns for Smash instant mashed potato in the UK. They were a family of Martian robots who would watch humans laboriously preparing mashed potato the traditional way on TV. The robots would then mock what they saw by chortling as they heard how the "Earth people peeled their own potatoes with their metal knives, boiled them for twenty of their minutes, then smashed them all to bits" – instead of using Smash instant mash. The voices were by Peter Hawkins. The catchphrase 'For Mash Get Smash' is still an iconic advertising slogan in the UK. The adverts featuring the Smash Martians were voted TV advert of the century by Campaign magazine.

First Direct is a telephone and internet based retail bank division of HSBC UK Bank plc based in the United Kingdom. First Direct has headquarters in Leeds, England, and has 1.9 million customers. It was awarded Most Trusted Financial Provider by Moneywise in 2019, and was ranked top in the February 2020 Competition and Markets Authority bi-annual survey for overall service quality.

Esure Group plc is an Internet and telephone based insurance company based in Reigate, Surrey, England. It also has offices in Manchester and Glasgow. The company was listed on the London Stock Exchange until it was acquired by Bain Capital in December 2018.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moneysupermarket.com</span> British price comparison business

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Confused.com is a UK based financial services comparison platform launched in 2001 and specialising in comparison of insurance and financial services, including car insurance, home insurance, energy, van insurance and life insurance. Confused.com's platform includes a website and app.

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Sir Peter John Wood is an English entrepreneur, most notable as the founder of the Direct Line and esure insurance companies. Wood was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1996 New Year Honours for services to the insurance industry, and knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to UK industry and philanthropy. In 2021 he was the 198th wealthiest person in Britain with an estimated personal fortune of £815 million, according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2021.

Comparethemarket is a UK price comparison website, founded in 2006, that is part of the BGL Group. The website also offers other on-line companies the ability to provide their customers with a co-branded or white labelled comparison service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compare the Meerkat</span> Advertising campaign for price comparison website comparethemarket.com

Compare the Meerkat is an advertising campaign on British and Australian commercial television for comparethemarket.com, a price comparison website, part of BGL Group. The adverts feature Aleksandr Orlov, an animated anthropomorphic Russian meerkat, and his family and friends. Orlov is portrayed as being of aristocratic stock and the founder of comparethemeerkat.com: the campaign originally centred on his frustration over the confusion between his website and comparethemarket.com, playing on the similarity between the words market and meerkat. Orlov's catchphrase is "Simples".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wynne Evans</span> Welsh singer, comedian, and actor

James Wynne Evans is a Welsh opera singer, presenter and actor, known for his role as Gio Compario and latterly himself in the Go.compare insurance adverts on UK television. Evans hosts a regular radio programme on BBC Radio Wales and has hosted programmes on BBC Radio 2.

Hayley Parsons is a Welsh entrepreneur and investor, most notable as the founder of British financial services comparison website GoCompare.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Chesterman</span> British internet entrepreneur (born 1970)

Alexander Edward Chesterman is a British Internet entrepreneur, co-founder of ScreenSelect, which later became part of online film distributor LoveFilm, and is the founder and former CEO of online used car platform Cazoo.

money.co.uk is a UK-based price comparison website launched in 2008. It compares financial products including credit cards, bank savings, and mortgages. The company is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority registered under Dot Zinc Ltd. In 2015 it was ranked as having the second fastest growing profits of the top 100 private companies in Britain by The Sunday Times BDO Profit Track 100 league table.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MyVoucherCodes</span> Online voucher code company

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References

  1. 1 2 3 "Annual Report 2016" (PDF). Go Compare. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 March 2018. Retrieved 25 January 2018.
  2. ↑ "Future plc acquires GoCo Group plc". Future PLC.
  3. 1 2 3 Dunkley, Jamie (1 July 2012). "Go Compare founder Hayley Parsons nets £3.2m dividend". The Daily Telegraph . Retrieved 11 January 2013.
  4. ↑ "Start-up compares well for ex-Admiral worker". Western Mail . 21 February 2007. Retrieved 2 February 2010.
  5. ↑ Sion Barry (11 September 2009). "Best business brains receive their awards at celebration of local talent". walesonline.
  6. ↑ "Go Compare". BIBA.
  7. ↑ "Newport-based Gocompare.com in £95m takeover deal". BBC News. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
  8. ↑ "Gocompare.com Shares Begin Trading After esure Demerger". TD Direct Investing. 3 November 2016. Retrieved 4 November 2016.[ permanent dead link ]
  9. ↑ Aime Williams, Oliver Ralph (14 November 2017). "ZPG confirms failed £460m bid for GoCompare.com". Financial Times.
  10. ↑ "GoCompare to buy MyVoucherCodes in £36.5m deal". Telegraph. 19 December 2017. Retrieved 19 December 2017.
  11. ↑ Sweney, Mark (25 November 2020). "Country Life publisher Future to buy GoCompare for £594m". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 26 November 2020.
  12. ↑ "Neilson FS partners with GoCompare to offer protection". www.covermagazine.co.uk. 21 September 2020. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  13. ↑ "Covered mag, presented by Gocompare.com". gocompare.com.
  14. ↑ "GoCompare creates opera singer to take on Comparethemarket's meerkat". marketingmagazine.co.uk.
  15. ↑ Burn, Rebecca (22 January 2015). "The most annoying adverts from the past 15 years". Telegraph. Retrieved 4 November 2016.
  16. ↑ "Marketing and advertising: Small screen, big rewards?". www.postonline.co.uk.
  17. ↑ Karen Price (26 July 2015). "Go Compare: The most annoying man on telly is back". walesonline.
  18. ↑ "Home Comforts Advertisement". Go Compare. Archived from the original on 20 December 2021. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  19. ↑ "Personal details at risk on comparison websites". The Times . 22 September 2007. Retrieved 2 February 2010.[ dead link ]
  20. ↑ Halpern, Louis; Roy Murphy (2009). Personal Reputation Management - Making The Internet Work For You. Halpern Cowan Publishing. pp. 162–163. ISBN   978-0-9562892-0-9.
  21. ↑ "GoCompare Car Insurance - www.gocompare.com - Go Compare Ban?". Money News Shopping. ASAP Ventures. 23 April 2009. Archived from the original on 7 January 2010. Retrieved 2 February 2010.
  22. ↑ "GoCompare Tree". Archived from the original on 20 December 2021 – via www.youtube.com.
  23. ↑ "Go Compare advert draws complaints over 'insensitive' car crash scene". ITV News.
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