Six years ago, MasterCard established a wonderfully simple partnership with Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C): When people dine out and use their MasterCard, MasterCard makes a donation, up to $4 million dollars to support SU2C, a non-profit whose mission it is to fund / accelerate innovative cancer research.
In 2014 we wanted to find a fresh way to break through the marketing clutter to engage people across our social communities… ultimately inspiring them to participate by dining out with their MasterCard to support SU2C.
We know people love sharing photos of their food on social channels. Building upon this natural behaviour we decided to give our effort a unique twist. We created a fun, sharable "food art" series – all built around the campaign platform of "When people #GetTogether for a cause, it's Priceless."
Partnering with a variety of artists, we created dozens of unique pieces social artwork – all leveraging f00d as the medium -- to differentiate our cause related message. The content was the published across our social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest), inspiring cardholders to dine out with families, friends and colleagues in support of SU2C.
As a result, we saw tremendous spikes in participation from consumers. Over 2MM social engagements (with engagement rates on Twitter being 55% higher than campaign averages) the overall effort helped MasterCard achieve the $4 million donation goal weeks ahead of schedule.
After six years of a successful partnership with Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C), we sought to create a campaign that not only encourages cardholders to participate in the philanthropic program, but gets them excited and inspires them to engage with the brand.
Going into the campaign we had two goals:
1) Generate social participation
2) Drive card usage…motivate our cardholders to dine out with their MasterCard to support SU2C
To achieve these goals we knew we would need unique, shareable and timely content for the campaign that would engage consumers across all of our social channels. We taped into the insight that people enjoy sharing and responding to images of food.The rich imagery activates the foodie in all of us. However, we needed a unique approach to break through the clutter.
Our idea was straightforward and organic to our social platforms: develop visually stunning and unique social "artwork" that evokes the spirit of "#GetTogether" -- all using food as the medium.
To bring this to life we partnered with some of the most prolific food artists to develop a mix of rich and engaging content. By creating highly visual and sharable content, we knew we were tapping into existing behavior that would not only propel our content forward, but break through the social clutter, and keep our "#GetTogether" messaging fresh and relevant throughout the entire campaign.
To draw in audiences from beyond the core philanthropic set, we tapped into a variety of cultural-relevant events to engage consumers.From the MLB All-Star Home Run Derby to National Oyster Day, the mix of content helped connect the joy of 'getting together' and campaign's charitable goals of supporting this Priceless Cause.
The campaign outperformed our expectations, by not only meeting the $4 million donation goal weeks ahead of schedule, but outperforming prior efforts to garnering top impression levels and engagement rates across our social channels.
By developing unique social content & tapping into behaviors our community had already adopted, our food art series generated some of the best comments, mentions and responses from our fans & followers -- propelling us to exceed our goals and generate meaningful social participation.
