Social Media Campaign Review: MasterCard India Aims to Connect with People with an Interactive Campaign

Objective

Through an interactive campaign, Master Card is trying to explore whether unconventional and eccentric methods of transactions can be facilitated, in turn, attracting innovators to its page.

Execution

Master Card’s new Facebook campaign page – World Beyond Cash Contest- features a video that overestimates the value of a card over money. Master Card has partnered with Hindustan Times for this campaign.

It tells us how the world is moving away fast from the primitive clutches of currency to the super modern era of virtual transactions.

There could possibly a day, the video contemplates, that ‘a chip in your tooth can pay while you eat’ or a farmer can buy farm stuff (tractor and chickens) with the impression of his index finger.

To participate in the contest, you can write a poem, an essay, click a picture sing a song, make a video or whatever else to tell your vision of a world beyond cash. In turn you could be rewarded (not in cash, of course). You could also participate in the contest as a group. Interestingly, the page also has a link to its ‘Idea Bank’ which gives you a bunch of suggestions if your creative being is half alive.

For instance, a Click Wrist Watch (bar code embedded, scan the code and order grocery), Smart Refrigerator (linked to your bank account, as the liquid levels go down, it places order automatically and makes the payment). Wild? Possibly.

The campaign will receive entries until May 31 and a jury of writers, economists, creative visionaries and senior MasterCard representatives, the campaign claims, will judge your idea.

Positives

The video is simple and pictorially rich. Overall, the campaign has precedents in terms of theme, but unique in execution and methods of participation. Imagine inviting poems, posters and videos at the same platform! It’s not high school stuff, perhaps an intelligent way of interacting.

Improvement

If I may suggest, the campaign can perhaps list out all the entries it has received to give some more clues to its users. The campaign can also be integrated with its other media platforms – web and print.

Conclusion

Remember the great punch line - there are some things money can’t buy, for everything else there is Master Card? It however appears through this Master Card campaign that there is almost nothing that money can’t buy. Whether condoms, bikes, insurance or deodorant, haven’t advertisers been selling only love, care and friendship since 1990s to the world?

But this time Master Card won’t tell you what, but how you could possibly buy in future. If connects well with the youth, which I reckon it is capable of, it could well be a hit. May be 6 on 10?