This boy can, yet most definitely Cannes not

The ad industry was probably too absorbed in its existential crisis to have noticed, but another hammer blow to our belief system was struck yesterday - in the shape of the release of GoCompare's first quarter results.

Here's what was reported...

- In the first quarter of 2015, while Signor Compario was cooling his heels on advertising's Elba, revenue rose just 1%.

- But this time around, following his new but not so improved return, it rose 19%, with profits predicted to jump between 20% and 30%.

- And the share price of Esure, GoCompare's parent company, rose a healthy 4.3% on the news: just the kind of unambiguously positive impact on shareholder value that the industry longs to crow about.

So should we await the raising of flags in Belgrave Square and of pints across Hoxton?

Er, no, not really.

For while this is advertising effectiveness, Gio, it's not as we know it to be.

Because we know, don't we, that advertising works when people like and enjoy it - when the viewer (in case of video) is offered an entertainment-based reward in return for their attention.

Yet this is regularly voted the country's most hated campaign.

And we also know that today's brands connect by engaging with consumers, thereby nurturing relationships.

Yet it seems that the most meaningful act of engagement this campaign inspires is people going on social media to complain about it.

So if we're going to continue to be taken seriously when claiming that our clients' business performance is our number 1 concern, we're either going to have to come up with some solid reasons why this is a freak, an aberration, the exception that proves the rule - or take a hard, objective look at some of our blanket assumptions.

Especially as I'm pretty sure that nine or so hours into my future there's someone who'll have read yesterday's announcement without a hint of surprise.

Cultivation of meaningless distinctiveness? Tick.

Prioritisation of shallow but broad reach over narrow, targeted engagement? Another tick.

Strategic focus on increasing the brand's mental availability? Tick three.

It's how he told us brands grow, and grow 2.

So given these numbers, fresh on top of all the ones he laid out, we really should start listening.

Mind you, I think Gio's entourage might have done something pretty darned clever with this latest campaign.

For years, many of London's finest advertising minds have tried all manner of ways to make him even just a tad more simpatico, but to little avail.

Until someone, perhaps, took inspiration from the company's very premise that the human mind evaluates comparatively, not absolutely...

...and wondered whether the best way to make Gio seem more likeable might be to surround him with a supporting cast who somehow manage to be even more aggravating than he is?

That way his arrival comes as a relative relief - anything to stop that cabbie talking - and his appeal unavoidably elevated by dint of not now being the least likeable person in the story.

It's a bit like how Monday night's Stamford Bridge showdown worked: when up against a Tottenham side possibly just three wins from the title, Chelsea suddenly came across as a most delightful bunch of lads.

Or, sadly, how all election campaigns these days seem to work...