The Campaign

In Australia, MasterCard was falling short with the highly valuable affluent segment. The classic Priceless platform had to evolve from simply observing moments to enabling experiences. Enter the Priceless Cities benefits program giving cardholders unique experiences and offers across hotels, dining, retail and entertainment. Our task was to launch the program to the local Sydney audience and inspire them to try new experiences in their own city. But being a city of distinct micro villages, Sydney-siders felt they didn’t have the necessary insider knowledge to have a genuinely priceless experience outside of their own neighbourhood. Our insight: Sydney-siders are looking for the undiscovered priceless experiences only really known by the neighbourhood locals. The idea: Locally Famous A groundbreaking campaign that transformed Sydney’s best-kept neighbourhood secrets into locally famous icons through integrated partnerships and a media strategy built from the ground up made by the locals for the locals.

Success of the Campaign

Priceless Sydney was an outstanding success. 75,400 conversations were started about the program through our hairdresser influencer program (66% above target). 1 in 4 Sydney siders saw the stories of local heroes through our content series. But what really mattered was the number of people participating in the program and the brand perception scores. The campaign smashed all expectations. Merchant offer uptake grew to 3,349, that’s a massive 841% increase on the previous year. Brand perception hit an all-time high with an unprecedented 144% increase in people considering MasterCard ‘engaging’ and a further 128% increase in people describing the brand as ‘exciting’.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

Our strategy was built on three pillars: 1. SHARE THE LOCAL KNOWLEDGE. We recruited 60 influential hairdressers and encouraged them talk about the program and hand out a Locally Famous kit bag comprising of leaflets and special offers. This was supported with a unique blogger outreach program. 2. BE FOR SYDNEY. We took over village markets for the day of launch and gave away tote bags containing a custom wrapped edition of the iconic Sydney Morning Herald. We also used bus shelters and chalk drawings (with messaging tailored to each area) to inspire new experiences. To support this, we partnered with Time Out to create custom booklets, ‘tear out and keep’ guides as well as an integrated mobile application. 3. HIGHLIGHT THE HEROES. Lastly, we created a 6 part branded content series focusing on the personal stories of the local heroes distributed across pre rolls, social media and across the MasterCard website.