Research Outline

Mastercard Marketing

Goals

To understand Mastercard's marketing and communication strategies, including a timeline of a typical campaign.

Early Findings

  • Mastercard generally prefers a differentiated marketing strategy, targeting customers from different segments across different campaigns.
  • Mastercard recently made the news with the decision to drop its name from its logo to achieve visual clarity.
  • The CMO for Mastercard recently publicly stated it was interested in evolving the 'Priceless' campaign for the modern age.
  • In early 2019, Mastercard made further waves by releasing its 'sonic branding', a sound that would play whenever the brand shows up - ads, sponsorships or even when someone makes a payment. They are hoping that within 3 years, it will become as recognizable as Mastercard's visual brand.
  • CMO Raja Rajamannar shares that the brand has 9 passion points that shape its experiential marketing strategy. They are sports, entertainment, music, travel, art and culture, culinary and dining, philanthropy, shopping and the environment. Sports is the most important to Mastercard at the moment.
  • Recently, Mastercard has been focusing on "longer, storytelling-style content that doesn’t fit within the typical 30-second spot format....'It really gives consumers something to sink their teeth into,' Miller says, adding that it has resulted in higher engagement on social and a majority of viewers watching videos to completion. 'It’s relatively new for us to go digital-first, but we’re pleased with the results so far.'"
  • Mastercard's Start Something Priceless campaign began on January 18, 2018. This campaign could be followed to develop a timeline for example purposes.