8 A BRAND REVAMP: CASE STUDY

The Mastercard campaign:

u201cThere are some things money canu2019t buy. For everything else thereu2019s Mastercard.u201d u2013 Priceless.

In 1990, Mastercard had a perception problem, and the business was in decline. Visa was creating aggressive promotional campaigns and gaining most of the cards users. Mastercard needed to create demand immediately.

According to the new advertising vice president, the brand was in a mess, having had three different campaigns running in five years with different positioning. The brand needed a long running position, consistency, and short campaigns that could branch off it.

The Mastercard CEO had a view and wanted to run a campaign positioning the company as the u201cfuture of the moneyu201d, which translated his view of the brand. Luckily for the brand he left the company, and the new CEO gave much needed freedom to the marketing team to interact with customers and prospects seeking their views and perception of the company.

Together with the advertising agency they interacted with customers and prospects trying to understand how they perceived Mastercard. What they discovered was that it was perceived as ordinary and everyday, but also seem to represent public resistance to credit cards. The campaign objective was to reinforce the perception of the day-to-day aspect that Mastercard could be part of your life, allowing you to enjoy the u2018pricelessu2019 experiences of life. The campaign worked so well that it brought back the customers and pride of the employees, and it still works today.

This doesnu2019t mean that the delivery of such promises was easy to fix. In fact there was huge work behind the improvements on the processes on distribution and sales. As said before, we must ensure the brand delivers what it promises. Always!

With new financial services companies, what drives any campaign is the set of values and actions that translates what the company stands for. Such effort must be tested beforehand with the prospects that the founders believe will be their target market.

We are witnessing some new digital banks running their market launch mainly on pricing, others on the colour of their debit or credit cards (personalisation). The latter is an old tactic used by established cards and banks which has not worked. This is weak.

What is driving such banks’ growth is word of mouth and usage of u2018guerrillau2019 marketing on social media, where speed, ease and value are the main drivers. They are also building among all of them the idea of a rebel, no-fee service bank, which unfortunately is not true. But some newcomers are growing by the day. The issue will come when they must live up to the hype they have created, sustain the brand reputation built, and answer to the investors on what will generate revenue in the long run and the sustainability of such positioning. As with any novelty, the public will try, but the new digital banks require a route to profitability, which also depends on them delivering on the expectation of the brand they are building.

Traditional banks do not help themselves when they are managed by the compliance departments with no empathy towards the customers. They are forgetting who u2018pays the billu2019.

We need to differentiate what kind of campaign a company will have. A new brand must have a positioning and a promotional one, as the two campaigns connect with what the company wants to stand for. Any company can adjust a campaign over time based on the reason customers bought and remain with its brand. Consistency must be present and short-term promotions do not make a company sustainable in the medium to long run.