A campaign to promote a new initiative from MasterCard Worldwide, called Priceless Cities, will include print advertisements by McCann Erickson Worldwide.
MasterCard Worldwide is expanding its efforts to bring its long-running “Priceless” advertising campaign to life.
For several years, MasterCard has been augmenting the campaign’s brand-burnishing efforts with tactical advertising that offers cardholders what are deemed “priceless” experiences through sweepstakes and other promotions.
Now, those initiatives are going to be joined by offers of special experiences in major cities around the world, to be called Priceless Cities.
The first city MasterCard has selected for the new effort is New York. Details are to be shared with reporters on Thursday afternoon at a news conference at Yankee Stadium.
The centerpiece of the initiative is a new section of the MasterCard Web site, mastercard.com/pricelessny. There will also be a considerable presence in the social media for Priceless Cities, on sites like Facebook and Twitter.
The Priceless Cities effort will be the subject of a big advertising and marketing campaign, to be handled by five agencies including McCann Erickson Worldwide, the creator of the original “Priceless” ads.
The introduction of Priceless Cities comes as local marketing is being revitalized by a flood of companies offering so-called geo-targeted discounts, deals and special offers.
Many of the deals and discounts have social media elements, as evidenced by the offerings of new companies like Groupon and LivingSocial.
Executives at MasterCard Worldwide, based in Purchase, N.Y., say the primary difference between those efforts and Priceless Cities is that the MasterCard initiative is not centered on percent-off deals or coupons.
Rather, they say, the idea behind Priceless Cities is to present consumers with experiences that they will perceive as one of a kind, unique or unusual.
Examples of the initial Priceless Cities offerings include a “safari sleepover” at the Bronx Zoo, “V.I.P. treatment” at the Red Rooster Harlem restaurant run by the chef Marcus Samuelsson and access to a new section of Yankee Stadium known as Batter’s Eye View – which includes a MasterCard Batter’s Eye Café.
Priceless Cities is intended to be “a real evolution of our brand promise,” Cheryl Guerin, senior vice president and group head for United States marketing at MasterCard Worldwide, said in a phone interview on Thursday before the news conference, which is to take place at the MasterCard café.
The offers are being aimed at “consumer passion points,” Ms. Guerin said, in areas like “sports, theater, entertainment, travel, shopping.”
The goal is to “put a little more ‘Priceless’ in their lives,” she added.
The new initiative is intended to establish “functional differentiation” between MasterCard and its competitors, Ms. Guerin said, by “delivering tangible benefits” for holding and using MasterCard credit cards.
At the same time, she added, MasterCard will continue its efforts at “emotional differentiation” with image-burnishing “Priceless” ads.
As part of the Priceless Cities initiative, MasterCard will “spend a significant amount of time engaging with consumers socially,” Ms. Guerin said. In addition to the presence on Facebook and Twitter, there will be “social stunts throughout New York,” she added, like placing the kinds of seats found in Yankee Stadium “all around the city.”
People who “sit in the seats and check in at Facebook Places” will be entered into a sweepstakes “to win experiences” from Priceless Cities, Ms. Guerin said.
New York is being chosen as the first city for the initiative for several reasons, she added, among them its concentration of holders of World and World Elite MasterCards and the huge numbers of tourists who visit New York each year.
Plans call for additional American cities to be added to the effort this year, Ms. Guerin said, and then cities around the world in 2012. She declined to identify which cities would join the initiative after New York.
The campaign to publicize Priceless Cities will include television, radio, print, online, transit and outdoor advertising, Ms. Guerin said. She declined to discuss the budget.
The agencies working on the campaign, in addition to McCann Erickson, include three shops that, like McCann Erickson, belong to the Interpublic Group of Companies. They are Octagon, for sponsorships and partnerships; R/GA, for digital work; and Universal McCann, the media agency.
The fifth agency involved, handling public relations, is Taylor.
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