Money Pug has enjoyed enormous success, despite only being founded in 2018, with thousands of social media followers converting to over 100,000 unique monthly visitors to the price comparison website. Lee Whitbread, a 32-year-old entrepreneur, is the man behind the scenes who is on a mission to change the face of the industry.
With so many household names already operating in the price comparison sector, it would take something special to not only find a gap in the market but to thrive. GoCompare, Moneysupermarket.com, and Comparethemarket are brands that soon come to mind, largely because of their extensive advertising campaigns across all forms of media.
Who is Lee Whitbread?
At the very heart of it all, Whitbread is every bit a philanthropist as he is a businessman. Charity and the desire to help numerous worthy causes is something that is extremely close to his heart. So much so that he has been open in his goals of using the success of Money Pug to support charitable causes.
Animal Lover
Launching a company under the name of Money Pug, it shouldn't come as any surprise to learn that the founder is a keen animal lover. When speaking about how the name came about, Whitbread said: "It stems from the fact that the UK's favorite animal is the dog and the pug is highly liked, due to is funny looks and caring personality."
A Social Media Guru
Up until this point, Money Pug's success has come through social media alone. Founder and Vice CEO Lee Whitbread comes equipped with extensive knowledge in social media marketing, having already built other family-friendly brands into multi-million-pound behemoths. At just 32 years of age, Whitbread still has a lot to offer moving forward.
His ultimate goal is to catapult Money Pug amongst the top five comparison sites in the United Kingdom and, if social followers are of any indication where Money Pug is going, the signs are good. At the time of writing, Money Pug boasts more followers on Twitter (104,000) than GoCompare (22,900), Comparethemarket (7,242) and Moneysupermarket.com (53,000) combined.
Graduating from Runshaw College in 2006 with a business degree, Whitbread's background is in the automotive industry where he worked at Withnell Car Sales. Social media has always been a passion of his, which is only natural being a Millennial that has seen the value of the growing trend of digital marketing. Whitbread understands the value of social media and, even more crucially, exactly how to engage with users on channels such as Facebook and Twitter.
While the ultimate goal is and always will be to convert followers into traffic on the website, without a loyal audience that simply is not possible. Whitbread executes a unique approach to Money Pug's social channels that are as far away from corporate as can be, tapping into the values of the target audience. With content that is fun and engaging, posts and, with that, the brand name is shared to a wider audience.
The Team Behind Money Pug
While Whitbread has undoubtedly been the driving force behind Money Pug, he is quick to point to the value of his team as a whole to achieve the ultimate goal of being the first point of call for consumers that need data when it comes to comparing prices. Both he and his team are continuing to work and devise new ideas they can offer customers that will grow the company to where it wants to be.
After a fast start, there is no sign of Money Pug slowing down any time soon and, with such a passionate leader in Whitbread, the landscape of the industry looks as though it will be unrecognizable in years' to come.
