Creative Execution

For 10 weeks, we monitored real-time tapping and social media data of 66 New Zealand towns. This allowed us to follow inter-town banter and respond with real-time communications to fuel fierce local rivalries. During the campaign, we created over 400 pieces of town-targeted social creative, including geo-targeting, leader boards and personalised shout-outs from Richie himself (on YouTube and Facebook), making tapping the talk of the town…in every town. When Queenstown emerged victorious, the game was broadcast nationwide on Facebook Live to 480,000 people. To New Zealanders there’s nothing more Priceless than bringing their living legend Richie McCaw out of retirement and into their town. Richie’s team won the game 11-10 in a thrilling overtime victory, but that was far from the only fantastic result.

The campaign reached 97% of New Zealanders while generating 48.3 million impressions (a number 10 times greater than the national population). During the campaign period, New Zealand towns together made 13.24 million taps, compared to 8.94 million taps in the same period in 2016 (an increase of 48% year on year). Monthly taps increased by 17% from 4.52 million to 5.29 million, monthly frequency increased by 11% from an average of 8.1 to 9.0 taps, and the penetration of tapping behaviour increased by 31,000 active cardholders from 531,000 to 562,000. These results are projected to deliver over 10 million additional transactions across next 12 months, equating to some NZD$212 million of value to Mastercard.

New Zealanders have a fierce love for their local area and rivalry with others. The Maori have a phrase – tangata whenua – used to describe people of a particular area. It means ‘people of the land’ and signifies the important relationship between people and place. We landed on a truth that people might not tap for themselves but they might for their town. But we would need something priceless to get the towns tapping. Our target audience was all New Zealander Mastercard cardholders. Yet as the campaign went live, we gathered data from 66 towns across the country, to create an ultra-targeted communications strategy, with 400 town specific pieces of creative developed.