You know those price comparison sites? You know, there’s money supermarket, um… the other one, er… and the one which sounds a bit like compare the meerkat.

So much so that with a piece of marketing genius, they have invented the meerkat Aleksandr Orlov (on twitter), the meerkat behind the site Compare The Meerkat.com. I had idly wondered whether the people behind the advertising campaign would have actually put together a meerkat comparison site to run alongside the ad campaign, and was delighted to see that they had.

Obviously, the site is full of opportunities for you to jump out and visit the ‘real’ site, compare the … naah, can’t remember it, it uses the same sort of colours, has advertising banners for the other site and tries to redirect you to the other site after a short period of time, unless you ensure it that you are serious about meerkats.

But credit to them. With compare the meerkat, they’ve created a memorable advertising hook, and as I’m never going to forget the name compare the meerkat, they have ensured that their similarly-named price comparison site is one that will stick in my head and probably get used if I want to do any price comparisons.

But you do actually get the opportunity to compare meerkats. Simply input your meerkat requirements — so, if you are looking for a small meerkat from London who is into Scuba diving, Scubakat will be found for you — along with other meerkats you may wish to compare him to.

Alexsandr Orlov also has a facebook page, and has been updating regularly on Twitter. Indeed, for any twitterers who had seen @stephenfry stuck in a lift, you may have initially been led to believe that there were no meerkats in the lift with him.

Alexsandr points out that this was not the case — he was stuck in the lift too — although some cynics may point out that this looks like a rather rough and ready photoshop job, these are probably the sort of ultra-sceptic freaks who would find it difficult to believe that a meerkat could build a website in the first place.

Hah! Well, Alexsandr is apparently due to launch a blog soon, and judging by the quality of the stuff he’s put on facebook, I just can’t wait.

…There were near 20,000 peoples at concert but I secure front row seat next to Cuban music man Emilio Estefan. He offer me Twix but I decline in favour of millipedes I bring in bag.Alexsandr Orlov

…I only hope he doesn’t talk about insurance comparison websites too much; obviously these are ten a penny, but there simply aren’t any other meerkat comparison sites that I’m aware of.