Previously CMO, Vile moved into the newly created chief brand officer role in May 2024 following a restructure of the company’s marketing leadership.
Compare the Market’s chief brand officer Mark Vile has stepped down after 18 years with the business.
Previously CMO, Vile moved into the newly created chief brand officer role in May 2024 following a restructure of the company’s marketing leadership.
The CMO position was scrapped to split oversight between Vile and chief customer officer Tom Wallis, allowing for greater focus on both short-term performance and long-term brand building.
“It was a huge remit,” Vile told Marketing Week in December last year, reflecting on his former CMO role. The remit included responsibility for performance marketing, trading, brand management and attracting customers.
Announcing his departure in a LinkedIn post, Vile wrote: “Back in 2007, we set out to change the world of comparison. What followed was more than a campaign. It became a category-defining journey that I feel incredibly proud and fortunate to have led.”
Among his highlights, he cited launching the meerkats, helping turn Compare the Market from a challenger brand into a category leader, and proving that aligning brand and performance marketing can be “game-changing”.
As chief brand officer, Vile led brand partnerships and managed the brand’s long-running and well-known ‘Compare the Meerkats’ brand platform.
“The lesson I’ve learnt is one about focus,” Vile told Marketing Week last year. “The ability to have these deeper relationships with partnerships, the ability to focus on that long-term brand equity, rather than having to constantly balance short-term trading versus the longer term.”
He first joined Compare the Market in 2007 as marketing director and was promoted to CMO in 2017. Before that, he spent five years as senior marketing manager across the company’s wider group.
Vile was a driving force behind the creation of the meerkats, which have become central to Compare the Market’s marketing strategy. He described the brand as having brought entertainment to what was a “dull” category.
“We have viewed ourselves as an entertainment property,” he says. “We’ve managed our characters in that way and that then allows us to have the right conversations with the partners that you can bring entertainment properties together.”
A replacement has yet to be announced.
