Baby Oleg Has Two Daddies: Compare the Meerkat Adverts Refelcting Modern Families

The Compare the Market or Compare the Meerkat advertisements have since their inception in 2009 become something of a staple on our screens. A relatively avid television watcher will frequently see these anthropomorphised CGI meerkats telling them, and the rest of the nation, that they can make big savings by getting insurance through Compare the Market. It utilised a set of jokes about eastern European accents accents, typographical errors, Russian wealth, pointless websites, and the aforementioned anthropomorphising of meerkats to create a memorable brand. All very clever marketing; and all very boring.

What is not so boring about the advertisement campaign is how Compare the Market have gone from using the two main meerkat protagonists, Aleksandr and Sergei, to advertise their website in an entrepreneur and employee/assistant relationship, to one that resembles a same sex couple. 

It started of relatively early as an employee/boss relationship.

Later, the idea of this same sex relationship began to be explored. An example of this can be observed at the end of the following advertisement. Aleksandr and Sergei are seemingly about to settle down and go to bed for the night. Both meerkats dressed for (or in) bed with only one being shown on screen, but this was only hinted at by the advertisers.

It was not until the introduction of baby Oleg that the slowly evolving dynamics of this on screen relationship reach its current point. An implied, yet fairly obvious, same sex family.

The advertisement remains in its grandiose location, presumably Aleksandr's stately home, but gone is the presence of a employee/boss relationship between Aleksandr and Sergei. The markers of this relationship, the business attire donned by Sergei have been replaced with his pyjamas. His first appearance on screen signalling a comfortability with his surrounding, the brushing of his teeth, preparing himself for another night as residency at the house. This of course could be a result of his job, he is simultaneously presented as an employee maintaining the Compare the Meerkat website and as a sort of butler, or assistant, to Aleksandr.

The initial interaction between Sergei and Aleksandr at the door of their mansion makes that seem less likely. When answering the sound of the doorbell, only to find a baby meerkat left on the doorstep, Aleksandr asks Sergei "Who has called zis time?". It was of course a baby called Oleg with a note asking for them to look after him, presumably by his mother who wished for him to be raised in a caring home. Or at the very least by a family who could provide a better standard of life for her child. The faces of Aleksandr and Sergei showing similar pleasure at the idea of adopting and raising a child as their own, particulalry after baby Oleg calls Aleksandr "dada". This is quite telling in itself, as it highlights the dynamics now growing within their relationship. Sergei has since his inception been occupying a subordinate role, one usually reserved in popular culture and society for the female.

Sergei was immediately pleased at the prospect of adopting a child. Aleksandr was considerably more reserved about the thought of bringing up baby Oleg, that was until he was invited by the child to adopt the role of its "dada". The carrying of the child by Sergei further solidifying the symbolic roles played by these two characters. Made even stronger when Aleksandr, who by now has firmly assumed the role of father, agrees to having a child under the stipulation that Sergei carries out the child caring duties. Sergei is symbolising the feminine in this relationship, he now has even more 'second shift' responsibilities. This obviously playing on the stereotype of feminine domesticity, and the idea that their is always a more feminine member of a same sex relationship.

What is so significant about these adverts, and what I have only just noticed about them, is how it symbolises the ever changing family landscape of modern Britain. The diverse nature of modern family life is one that has been largely ignored by the advertisers who often choose to 'play it safe' when it comes to depicting the domestic. To have a family setting, even one that is only implied, where a gay couple adopts a child, on national television, as part of a popular advertisement campaign, would have unthinkable in the not too distant past. There simply would have been outrage. 

To extent that would still be the case, they are using anthropomorphism to make these characters disconnected from humanity, to make it acceptable to the conservative elements of society, and to break this ground. They are hiding the meaning away and never explicitly stating Sergei and Aleksandr's relationship, and they are using comedic elements to gloss over much of its importance. Advertisements are still a medium of communication dominated by 'traditional' nuclear families, the working husband, the domesticated mother, and the 2.4 children, they all remain mainstays of television and print advertisement. 

However, with all things considered, this is still one small paw in the right direction.