The MasterCard Priceless Engine
#PricelessSurprises
Since MasterCard is not a bank, they do not issue their own cards and therefore do not know their card users and actual consumers directly. In this complex business model, they work with card-issuing banks, merchants accepting these card payments and consumers who use the card, making it difficult to do one-on-one audience targeting.
The main challenge is to define and develop a new innovative and scalable model that would enable MasterCard, as well as their bank and merchant partners to to cut through the clutter and reach the right audience with the right content and offers to drive actual transactions and real business value.
The Approach
MasterCard launched The Priceless Engine model - a combination of people, process and platforms, to crunch data, track trends and insights, and study social media conversations as they happen. This innovative marketing platform provides MasterCard, the banks and merchant partners with deep insights that could break through noise in the market landscape and deliver the right offers and messages to the right people at the right time.
The Priceless Engine was used and deployed across the APAC region through a consolidation of its roster of digital agencies (regional creative lead agency, media, PR, activation, as well as respective local agencies) and get them to work seamlessly towards a common goal. By leveraging on digital and social expertise from each agency, MasterCard is able to drive business growth and strategic digital leadership.
All Priceless Engine campaigns started with the creation of an emotional spark with people (gathered from insights through the Priceless Engine data centre) and encouraging them to engage/share their stories relevant to each campaign. These responses were then turned into insights that were used to push hyper relevant offers from various MasterCard merchants to them.
Watch the MasterCard Priceless Engine case study video here.
The Results
These campaigns have results in a never-before-seen business results for MasterCard and its partners, turning social media and data into an actual business generating channel. Across the region, the following objectives and KPIs were formulated:
Building deep relationships with consumers through inspiring content to find deep insights about their behaviour
Driving cross-border and e-commerce transactions for MasterCard, and their partner banks and merchants
Creating efficiency in social media buying
Driving MasterCard’s Gross Domestic Value (key business metric) in campaign markets
The results were phenomenal with some campaigns driving over 300% higher engagement rates in every market. Overall card transactions were lifted in all markets versus the same period last year.
Several Priceless Engine campaigns have won more than 15 marketing effectiveness awards including The Shorty Awards, Effie Awards Asia Pacific, etc and a Harvard Business Review case study.
See one of the Priceless Engine campaign results here.