PRICELSS JAPAN

TitlePRICELSS JAPAN
BrandMASTERCARD
Product / ServicePRICELSS JAPAN EXPERIENCES
CategoryA07. Corporate Image & Sponsorship
EntrantMcCANN ERICKSON JAPAN Tokyo, JAPAN
Idea Creation McCANN ERICKSON JAPAN Tokyo, JAPAN
Media CARAT Tokyo, JAPAN
PR WEBER SHANDWICK Tokyo, JAPAN
Production DIGITAL ARTS NETWORK TOKYO, JAPAN

Credits

Name Company Position
Isamu Nakamura McCann Erickson Japan Executive Creative Director
Yasuaki Kurata McCann Erickson Japan Art Director
Peter Hibberd McCann Worldgroup Singapore Regional Creative Director
Yasuhiko Murayama McCann Erickson Japan Creative Director / Copywriter
Tetsuya Kinouchi Word and Sentence LLC Executive Producer
Tetsuya Akama Word and Sentence LLC Producer
Kunio Nozawa NINE TWENTY Co. Ltd Director
Ryoya Yamakawa freelance Director of Photography
Tetsuo Kimura freelance 2nd Unit Camera
Mitsuru Sasaki freelance Lighting Director
Taisei Iwasaki freelance Music Composer

The Campaign

We’ve decided to get Japanese to find the best of Japan they never knew, because the best of Japan is usually hidden from plain sight. Even for Japanese their own country can be surprising. Optimizing the technology “The Digital and eCommerce Engine”, utilizing massive social listening, and big data analytics, we identified the hottest/ trendy experiences the consumers feel most relevant and precisely target to them.We found out that affluent consumers in Japan, not only craves for breathtaking experiences, but they have a high motivation in participating in fashion related events, and they also feel a strong sense of affinity with foreign artists who are fond of Japanese culture. A multi-platinum award winning musician Gwen Stefani and an iconic fashion designer in Japan Keita Maruyama, are chosen for as Priceless Japan ambassadors, to connect Japanese consumers with the Priceless Japan experiences for finding highly relevant contents.

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.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

The results were overwhelming, exceeding all financial services benchmarks in Japan. ?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) ?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 from the social video. ?Delivered over 700 priceless surprises derived from the social video. ?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.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Since we had very few interactions with consumers in the past, we decided to narrow down our targets to fashion and music lovers by sponsoring Fashion Week Tokyo and nominating an iconic fashion designer Keita Maruyama as our ambassador. Followed by multi award winning singar Gwen Stefani as ambassador who are well-known as a Japanese culture lover and fashionista to maximize the surprising elements of our offers as additional excitements throughout the whole Priceless Japan campaign. Thus, we resulted to have unprecedented interaction with consumers and made them realize the breathtaking expereinces in Japan, they even have never known before.

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 “experiences 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. We also strategically selected Fashion Week Tokyo, as our sponsership to generate and maximize the interaction with fashion lovers.