2013 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

Despite Visa being universally accepted all over the world, half of people travelling abroad still prefer to use cash and local currency when making transactions. This represents a real barrier for growth to Visa’s cross-border business (i.e UAE cardholders travelling abroad). The problem rests in consumer beliefs regarding Visa usage abroad such as high costs incurred with card transactions. The facts are, Visa takes the hassles out of exchanging currency, giving people more time to enjoy their trip. Therefore, our idea was to position Visa as the perfect travel companion by giving people a chance to test their travel knowledge!

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

When encouraging interaction, magazines are often ignored but involvement created by reading is more intense because of the required immersion. Therefore, using a DPS in key titles, we developed a special print execution featuring 50 ‘peel-off’ tabs. On each tab was a souvenir characterizing a particular City. The instructions were simple – test your travel knowledge by guessing which city is behind the souvenir. If readers were racking their brains, they could simply peel the tab off to reveal whether they’d guessed correctly or not. We also brought the ad into the 21st century by incorporating Zappar technology.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

In fact, time spent with the Visa ad was 9 times greater than with a standard DPS. The Zappar application even increased traffic to the Visa website from smartphones by 560%. Finally, from a business perspective, Visa witnessed a rise in both outbound transactions (up 33%) and volumes (up 30%) – clear evidence we’ve educated travellers on using Visa abroad.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

We breathed life into a traditional (and somewhat restrictive) format by creatively inviting readers to test their travel knowledge. With greater involvement, we effectively improved the amount of time spent engaging with the Visa brand.