The Campaign

We’ve decided to get Japanese to find the best of Japan they never knew, since it is usually hidden from plain sight. Even for Japanese, their own country can be surprising. Affluent consumers in Japan have a high motivation in participating in fashion related events, and also feel a sense affinity with foreign artists who are fond of Japanese culture. So we launched Priceless Japan with Gwen Stefani teaming up with iconic fashion designer Keita Maruyama to participate in Fashion Week Tokyo, an exclusive Gwen's concert and many more. To let consumers know about these exciting offers, we shot videos with Keita translating Gwen’s announcements. However, Keita's Japanese translation is secretly letting the Japanese public know that the whole country is invited to pricelessly surprise Gwen. In addition, we made full use of our technology system "The Digital and eCommerce Engine" to optimize engagement with consumers to boost usage after

Creative Execution

We paired up the two ambassadors to deliver a series of videos to engage with the consumers. We leveraged the context of each ambassador's background and framed the videos' narative based on 'Lost in Translation' - where Keita was meant to help Gwen with the translations for Japanese audience and as it got closer to the marque events, Keita secretively engaged the consumers to plan a surprise for Gwen when she visited Japan. These events consisted of access to Fashion Week Tokyo, and Gwen's 1 night only private concert in Tokyo and many more. To top up the hype, we put a twist at the end when one of our Japanese cardholders (who is a big fan of Gwen) was chosen for his idea on how to surprise her and turned out our two ambassadors had actually planned a Priceless Surprise for him.

The results were overwhelming, exceeding all financial services benchmarks in Japan. ?17 million video views (6million completed views) ?Social & programmatic video content had 4x and 2 x higher response rates vs competition (most viewed video on LINE) ?Media value of $12million vs our $2.5million investment ?Over 2,000 attendees to Gwens live concert derived. ?Delivered over 700 priceless surprises derived. ?36 million consumers reached (31% of online population) ?19 million consumer engagements (1.5x above benchmarks) ?1.8 million clicks to purchase (14x industry average) ?Social amplification through Gwen’s own channels (her posts on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and FB received more than 500,000 likes collectively), and influencers like Japanese actress Yu Yamada (her post at Gwen’s concert received 17,400 likes), legendary singer Maki Nomiya and television presenter Harry Sugiyama to name a few, who were in attendance at our events. All of these were driven organically with no media dollars.

We knew that social media would be a key to bring our brands back to life, since everyday use of social media is big in Japan. Mastercard found out there has been a big shift in Japanese consumers value, their desire has been shifting from “things (31.9%)” to “experiences (62%)” Mastercard knew that this was the right moment to release their newly developed campaign “Mastercard Priceless Japan”, to stand as a brand that believes “experience matter more than things”. Mastercard launched “Priceless Japan”, to become a brand that is relevant to the Japanese consumers by optimizing this big shift in value to ultimately gain an increase in card issues and usage.