How we launched Compare the Market's landmark EFL partnership by renaming a 149-year-old football club
To announce Compare the Market as the new Official Partner of the EFL, we didn't launch with a press release, we launched with a name change. For one week only, League Two's Crewe Alexandra became Crewe Aleksandr, with the brand's much-loved meerkat taking his place on the crest, the shirt and the stadia signage as the face of a new partnership spanning all 72 EFL clubs.
Compare the Market had signed an exciting new multi-year partnership with the EFL covering all 72 clubs across the Championship, League One and League Two. The challenge was to announce it in a way that grabbed the attention of UK football fans, felt authentic to the EFL, and not just another logo on a football shirt; something that would resonate with EFL fans in the heart of their communities, while also giving the brand cut-through nationally and in territories (and terraces!) it had never reached before.
Rather than tell people about the partnership, we gave them something to talk about. We identified Crewe Alexandra as the perfect first activation club - a founding member of the Football League with 149 years of history and a name ripe for a play on words - and, working with the club and Crewe legend and broadcaster Dean Ashton, we temporarily renamed it Crewe Aleksandr for the opening week of the 2026/27 season.
The rebrand went far beyond a headline: a new badge, matchday signage at Crewe’s stadium, training kit detailing, a re-branded team bus, and bags of content all carried the Aleksandr identity, fronted by Dean Ashton and Compare the Market's very own meerkat himself. It was a single, simple, shareable idea built to unlock the wider story: the EFL partnership itself, the Compare the Market app, and the season of rewards, prize draws and community initiatives to come for fans at all 72 clubs.
- Club takeover: Crewe Alexandra's badge, signage and matchday assets were transformed into Crewe Aleksandr for the club's first game of the new season, giving the story a real, physical moment to anchor to.
- The teaser post to start it all: Dean Ashton posed with fans and Aleksandr inside Crewe’s stadium, and his cryptic social post got fans of Crewe and far beyond speculating about what on earth was going on…
- Talent-led storytelling: Dean then fronted the reveal alongside Aleksandr as the duo guested on a TalkSPORT phone-in to playfully reveal exactly what was happening. Dean’s inclusion gave broadcast, online and sports media an authentic, credible voice from inside the club to lead the charge.
- National and regional broadcast: On reveal day, a subsequent interview with Dean and Aleksandr was then distributed across 153 regional radio stations as part of lunchtime news programming, and 120 stations for evening news bulletins - hitting local EFL communities up and down the country.
- Fan inclusion: Strategic inclusion of fan groups, podcasts, and voices to ensure supporter inclusion.
- Always-on social storytelling: Short-form video and imagery of the reveal were built specifically for social and reels formats - where the football fan conversation takes place - extending the story well beyond the initial announcement and into the first game of the season.
- Fuelling fans’ feeds: The sustained social media visibility caused Crewe fans to go meerkat meme crazy, with supporters even chanting about meerkats in the away end!
- Message discipline: Every piece of coverage was built to land three things: the scale of the new EFL partnership, the role of the Compare the Market, and the rewards and initiatives fans can expect across the season.
1,120 pieces of coverage to date across national, regional, broadcast, sports and trade media, and associated social channels.
It was the quality of that coverage, as much as the volume, that delivered against the brief on both a national and community level, landing Compare the Market in brand-new territory, with SPORTbible just one standout example of coverage in a title the brand had never previously secured.
Broadcast added another dimension entirely. The Dean Ashton and Aleksandr interview ran across 153 regional radio stations at lunchtime and 120 stations in the evening news slot, delivering a combined reach of 3.9 million listeners straight into the heart of EFL communities, across a total of 6 hours 40 minutes of broadcast time.
Throughout, key messaging landed consistently from the breadth of the EFL partnership itself, to the Compare the Market app, to the rewards, prize draws and initiatives fans can look forward to across the season ahead.
