Mastercard leveraged its rights at The Open 2017 by creating an emotional campaign – #ArnieWould – as both a memorial to the legendary Arnold Palmer.
The initiative, developed in harness with agency Octagon, leveraged his status as a sports icon, a gentleman and drew upon his example as an inspiration from ‘A life well played’ in a world with too many superficial celebrities and not enough meaningful role models.
Palmer’s legacy is perhaps no more keenly felt than at The Open, an event he won twice, but also an event he reinvigorated with his style, TV appeal and humility.
In terms of the background to the sponsorship, Mastercard typically uses The Open to drive brand awareness, affection and ultimately, card usage across all consumer touchpoints throughout the event while simultaneously using media channels, specifically digital, to engage fans with content which resonates emotionally with the target audience.
The objectives for the partnership include:
• Brand Affection: Create an emotional connection with the target audience through their passion for golf which results in an uplift in brand appeal amongst the target audience
• Brand Engagement: Engage consumers in sport relevant conversations throughout the event and exceed the digital/social engagement benchmarks set during the previous year by at least 10%.
• Drive Top-of-Wallet Behaviour: Encourage top-of-wallet behavior (preferred purchase intent) and card usage (uplift in transactions, value varies) from previous year by 10%
• Product Integration: Support Mastercard’s position as an innovator who are at the forefront of payment technology and security by ensuring 100% card acceptance and integrating digital payment technology.
Initially introduced as a tribute campaign at the Arnold Palmer Invitational (PGA Tour) in March 2017, #ArnieWould evolved into a more inspirational in tone, and to appeal to a wider, more international audience for The Open, supporting the overarching Mastercard ‘Priceless’ brand position and ultimately as an uplifting, inspirational platform.
In order to hit other objectives, compelling card usage incentives were developed with the rights-holder to drive top-of-wallet behaviour.
Furthermore, in a ground-breaking development for a sporting event in Europe, Mastercard tailored the publically available ‘Qkr! with Masterpass’ food and beverage ordering app currently live in over 500 well known restaurants around the UK, to enable fans to order food and drink to be delivered directly to their grandstand seat.
The campaign itself was executed in both digital and experiential formats, #ArnieWould was launched with a compelling ‘Hero Content’ piece across Mastercard and R&A channels which instantly struck a chord with golf fans everywhere.
MasterCard / #ArnieWould (case study) from Jason McKean on Vimeo.
At #TheOpen and in life, go for the green. #ArnieWould pic.twitter.com/wjr4pPSxcI
— Mastercard (@Mastercard) July 19, 2017
The brand and agency data shows that it gained 99% positive sentiment:
• Hero video launched to kick-off the campaign
• Supported with tactical/snackable social media posts throughout event week to both Mastercard Global and local market social channels
• Worked with the R&A to utilise rights-holder social channels
The activation’s media plan leveraged partnerships with NBC (US TV) & The Telegraph (UK) to generate awareness
Card usage was another crucial element of the activation:
• Developed branding and incentives to drive card usage at all touchpoints the journey – ticket purchase (online and onsite), merchandise (online and onsite), F&B
• Card usage substantially up across every POS from previous event metrics
Product Integration:
• Supported a key regional and global objective with the usage of Qkr! with Masterpass app to enable F&B delivery to seat on the 9th green grandstand
• Qkr! uses the Masterpass digital wallet which is a critical business objective globally
• Showcased how Qkr! can be used in other retail environments by demonstrating the product in a vending machine which dispensed product live onsite
• Used this product integration as a hook to create a media event for key European technology journalists
• Created content featuring Mastercard ambassador Ian Poulter to support awareness of Qkr! activity and technical innovation (video link)
On site, the activation included the following strands:
• Built the Mastercard Club which was open to all cardholders as a point of differentiation onsite, with the goal of offering cardholders an elevated experience of The Open
• Ensured the campaign theme was integrated throughout the Mastercard Club
• Created a touchscreen content system through which cardholders could engage with campaign content and contribute through their own social media channels
The ambassador led phases included:
• Utilised the Mastercard golf ambassadors (Tom Watson, Mark O’Meara, Justin Rose, Ian Poulter) to amplify the sponsorship through social
• Created a bespoke event with Justin Rose for livestream with Mastercard and Open social channels, a key business objective
• Gave cardholders access to ambassadors through meet and greets, Q&A’s
There were also partner promotions:
• IP and assets used with 8 partners to develop card usage campaigns in several markets including UK, Ireland, Thailand and Poland
Priceless Cities links:
• Used assets to create content for 10 Mastercard Priceless City websites across the globe, another key sponsorships objective
and a B2B hosting programme:
• Hosted 375 guests at The Open over 4 days, up 13% from 2016
The activation, which ran from 16 to 24 July, is linked to an annual tournament rights fee for the partnership reported to be worth around £700,000
Comment:
In terms of results the activation generated the following silos of statistics.
Brand Affection, Engagement & Card Usage:
• Achieved 55% Share-of-Voice (SOV) for Mastercard from all Open partners during the week. Up from 49% in 2016. The second leading sponsor generated 16% SOV
• Campaign generated 8M video views
• R&A post event survey showed 74% of ticket purchasers were aware of Mastercard ticket promotion
• 88% of people who purchased tickets with a Mastercard actively did so to benefit from the promotion
• 62% of all tickets were purchases using a Mastercard. Up from 46% in 2016
• A survey conducted in the Mastercard Club rated 9.66/10 against the statement ‘I am likely to continue using my Mastercard following this event’
• Mastercard generated 51% of card share at Food and Beverage POS, up from 43% in 2016
• Mastercard generated 44.6% of card share at onsite merchandise POS
• Mastercard UK social media competition generated 95% more entries than 2016
• Over 19,000 people used the Mastercard Club at Royal Birkdale
• 3,800 people engaged with the touchscreen content system
• 1,505 people shared the Hero Video on Facebook
• Campaign generated 5,621 mentions on social, up from 1,032 (+460% from 2016)
• ‘High Tea with Justin’ event for livestream resulted in 73.5k views on social
Product Integration:
• Priceless Surprises content to generate awareness of Qkr! app generated 1.9M video views
• 44 pieces of positive PR from Qkr! activity
• 507 Qkr! transactions at event
• Rights-holder will continue to support Mastercard product and technology goals going forward
Partner Promotions:
• Highest number of issuer (Bank) partner promotions ever for The Open with 4
• All partner promotions showed uplift in Mastercard usage
Links:
Mastercard
https://www.youtube.com/user/MasterCard
https://www.facebook.com/Mastercard
https://twitter.com/mastercard
https://www.instagram.com/mastercard
The Open (The R&A)
https://www.priceless.com/golf/
https://www.facebook.com/The-Open-Championship
https://www.instagram.com/theopen/
https://www.youtube.com/user/theopen
Octagon
