GoCompare’s change of ad tack sparks complaints rush

Are Chris Wilkins and Sian Vickers still available?

CoCompare.com abandoned its long-serving in-house creative team – the inventors with director Graham Rose of the noisy Gio Compario – as a shiny new CMO moved the business to shiny agency Droga5, famed for pushing creative boundaries. D5 kept Gio (although it might have wished not to) but showed him as a non-singing protagonist in a pretty spectacular car crash.

Since when complaints have been flooding in to the ASA ad regulator in such quantity that it appears to have already launched an investigation.

In the social media age, of course, there are lots of people who seem to be upset about things on an hourly basis. Poor Robert Peston is currently taking a monstering on Twitter for observing that the late Lord Tim Bell was a pretty nice chap despite his raft of unwholesome PR clients.

GoCompare and D5 are doubtlessly trying to get down to the nitty gritty of car insurance claims here – many of which involve accidents, some of which are unpleasant and upsetting.

But they haven’t got the tone quite right. And could have created their own car crash.