Gio Compario, the opera-singing character from the Gocompare.com television adverts, has helped drive record customer numbers to the insurance comparison site.

The campaign, which launched last August 2009, has driven a 20% increase in customer numbers to Gocompare.com over the last six months and, during the first two months of 2010, has helped generate more than four and a half million insurance quotes.

The campaign stars opera singer Wynne Evans, who recorded the reworked George M Cohan classic ‘Over there’ as well as acting in the adverts.

Gocompare.com’s head of marketing, Nick Hall, said: “We’ve seen a dramatic increase in brand awareness since the campaign started, up by 450%, which puts us at the top of the price comparison category, and this has ultimately converted into record customer numbers. The aim was always to differentiate the brand and put some fun and personality into the ads, and to-date it has worked exactly as planned.

“Gio is a great character with huge audience recall and we are looking forward to developing the campaign further in 2010. It will be interesting to see how Gio evolves.”