Gio drives Gocompare.com to record results

Gio Compario, the larger than life opera singing character from the Gocompare.com TV adverts, has helped drive record customer numbers for the insurance comparison site.

The campaign, which launched in August 2009, has driven a 20 per cent increase in customer numbers for Gocompare.com over the last six months and, in the first two months of 2010, has helped generate over four and a half million quotes for insurance alone.

The campaign stars opera singer Wynne Evans who recorded the reworked George M Cohan classic ‘Over there' as well as acting in the ads.  So far Gio has been seen popping up in coffee shop and restaurant settings, as well as jumping out of a cupboard in a finishing school and hovering over suburban driveways.  

Gocompare.com's head of marketing, Nick Hall, said: "We've seen a dramatic increase in brand awareness since the campaign started - up by 450% - which puts us at the top of the price comparison category, and this has ultimately converted into record customer numbers.  The aim was always to differentiate the brand and put some fun and personality into the ads and to date it has worked exactly as planned.

"Gio is a great character with huge audience recall and we are looking forward to developing the campaign further in 2010. It will be interesting to see how Gio evolves."

Wynne Evans, who plays the fictional tenor said; "Gio is great fun to play, he's a larger than life comic opera character and it is a role you can really throw yourself into.  I've always enjoyed playing the comic parts as well as the more serious stuff, so I think Gio is a combination of all those great comic opera characters.  Everyone seems to know the character now and I get so many people singing it back to me.  The reaction has been amazing so I'm not surprised at how well it is working for Gocompare.com."