The most recent film campaign by Mastercard features that since Independence Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been tracking India’s growth. He and our small and medium-sized companies expressed gratitude for making India economically solid, self-sufficient, and sustainable. Those are the men who took India to ‘aatamanirbharta’ from Azadi. With another call for merchants to take on digital payment in the movie, Dhoni strengthens this message.
Mastercard also hosts a competition, in which dealers who accept digital payments are currently given the opportunity to share their testimonies about how it has helped their company to qualify for a Mastercard Priceless Surprise from the top ten entries chosen by the jury.
The latest campaign is an extension of the Cashless India initiative from Mastercard, which aims to empower small businesses with digital payments. In the context of this initiative, Mastercard launched an education campaign throughout India for traders who often experience a lack of awareness of the merits of digital payments in their enterprise.
The iconic slogan of Mastercard, introduced in 1997, caught the imagination of the crowd instantly. Even before viral ads and web posts took place, people conducted baseball matches with placards describing the price of different items and then finished with the word “priceless” to mimic a marketing campaign by the company. Yet while it may sound like an enticing slogan, the “Priceless” approach of Mastercard is rooted in brand management and a desire to find a solution to a simple problem.
Mastercard had a struggle with perception back in the mid-1990s. Banks saw fewer people taking Mastercard items, as Visa had a stronger market influence. Mastercard had to do so by creating expectations among the US public to generate brand demand from banks.
MasterCard wanted a long-term marketing campaign in the late 1990s in order to reinvent the company on a ‘burning platform’ in the United States. Yet though Mastercard realized that he would become a star with Priceless, 22 years later nobody expected that he would still be a part of the brand’s DNA.
During these unprecedented times, also in the battle against COVID-19 in India, the business group was at the forefront of preserving the delicate balance between social distance and social engagement. The constant endeavour of Mastercard is to give these retailers the opportunity to learn financial literacy and digital payments.
