Market Harborough Changes Name to Meerkat Harborough

Half the Town Votes to Secure Twin Town Status With the Home of Aleksandr Orlov

LONDON, February 25, 2011 - Market Harborough yesterday officially changed its name to Meerkat
Harborough. The name change, for one day only, is to mark the Leicestershire
town becoming the UK twin town of the Russian village of Meerkovo, the home
of Aleksandr Orlov, founder of comparethemeerkat.com.

Market Harborough beat off strong competition from Market Drayton,
Downham Market, Windermere and Weston-Super-Mare in a public vote held on
Facebook. The news was announced in the Meerkovian
(meerkovo.comparethemarket.com/meerkovian), the weekly newspaper of
the meerkat village, which can be read on www.meerkovo.com.

The search was launched to raise awareness of the plight of the
meerkat villagers, who are the focus of the latest comparethemeerkat.com TV
commercials. Meerkovo, which is dependent on Aleksandr's meerkat comparison
business, continues to suffer as people in the UK looking for cheap car
insurance on comparethemarket.com
(www.comparethemarket.com/car-insurance/) are visiting
comparethemeerkat.com (www.comparethemeerkat.com/) by mistake.
This is clogging up the website and they want to clear up the confusion.

The Meerkovo twin towns search attracted over 1000 nominations for over
100 UK towns from meerkat fans via Facebook and Twitter. These were
shortlisted to the final five, which went to the public vote.

To secure the twin town status, residents and businesses of "Meerkat"
Harborough created an unstoppable campaign, generating over 8,000 votes, the
equivalent of half the town's population.

Market Harborough's campaign activity, which attracted strong support
from its local media, included creating two Facebook campaign pages (one with
over 2,000 followers), an official Meerkat Harborough Twin Town committee, a
dedicated campaign website with daily updates and even a movie.

Councillor Rosita Page, Chair of Harborough District Council, received
the twin town status certificate today and to mark the occasion the town's
main road signs were changed to "Meerkat Harborough" for the day. The town
will also receive a community donation of GBP5,000.

Speaking from his mansion, Aleksandr Orlov said, "It give me large
pleasure to announce Meerkat Harborough as winner of prestigious twin town
polls. I have great hope that the twinning of two great and handsome villages
will help raise awareness of the plight of long-suffering Meerkovo. Market
Harborough-ians everywhere should be very proud of achievement!"

People looking to help the meerkat village in-need can visit
www.meerkovo.com where they can meet and cheer up its inhabitants,
play games to help save Meerkovo and prove they know the difference between
comparethemarket.com and comparethemeerkat.com

For full details on the poll visit Aleksandr's Facebook and Twitter sites
or read the Meerkovian newspaper at www.meerkovo.com

facebook.com/Comparethemeerkat

twitter.com/aleksandr_orlov

For further press information or high res images please contact Adrian Chitty, Annie Tarling or Selen Morgan at Good Relations. Tel: +44(0)20-7861-2551 Email: TeamMeerkat at goodrelations.co.uk