The Visa Digital Skyline Projections offered football fans and San Francisco residents a spectacular Super Bowl 50 light show in tribute to the NFL and to the Bay Area.
As millions of fans headed to San Francisco for Super Bowl week, Visa’s objective was to spearhead its league leverage programme through an experience that captured the beauty, innovation and competitive spirit of the city.
This multi-screen digital projection, featuring football iconography and historic San Francisco landmarks, lay at the core of the NFL partner’s ground game.
Powered by 34 high-watt projectors and reaching more than 260 feet high on the front of Visa’s One Market headquarters building (in the heart of Super Bowl City), the installation kicked off on Saturday, 30 January and continued to light-up the San Francisco skyline through Super Bowl Sunday.
And, for those unable to make it to San Francisco in Super Bowl week, Visa’s Digital Skyline Projections films were hosted on www.Visa.com, on its YouTube channel,
and across its other social platforms too.
Congratulations from @Visa to the #SB50 winners, the Denver @Broncos. You've made Denver fans proud!https://t.co/XgZmBRWME5
— Visa (@Visa) February 8, 2016
Indeed, Visa played a prominent role around Super Bowl City for the nine day event festivities – including hosting a concert at Justin Herman Plaza and activating across the Super Bowl City fan zone.
Indeed, the light show, which was developed in collaboration with creative studio Obscura Digital, sat at the heart of Visa’s activation programme that focused on innovation to enhance multiple strands of the fan Super Bowl experience.
A more product-relevant aspect of this approach saw Visa install around 700 Near Field Communication terminals at the stadium itself and at the NFL Shop in the NFL Experience.
These activated Visa Checkout in the NFL Super Bowl 50 app, enabling fans inside Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara,to order drinks, snacks and merchandise directly from their seats at the Big Game (with Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay or other smartphone payment services).
Visa used the event to showcase innovative new technologies both at Levi’s Stadium, Super Bowl City and at Visa headquarters in downtown San Francisco and to offer cardholders unforgettable experiences.
This tech-led theme also saw Visa run a media-tie in led by football star Rob Gronkowski who used his Visa card and Visa Checkout to shop for the perfect present for Conan O’Brien, with hilarious results.
Visa also ran various national cardholder competitions with those using their Visa cards during a promotional period being automatically entered for a chance to win a trip to Super Bowl 50.
The resulted in the payments giant hosting more than 100 winners at the Super Bowl.
‘It’s a special experience seeing the joy our cardholders get from this once-in-a-lifetime experience,’ explains Lori Goehring, senior director of Global Client Integration.
‘With Super Bowl City centered at the edge of the San Francisco Bay, we were honoured that Visa, one of San Francisco’s leading technology companies, has chosen to provide what promises to be an incredible nightly program paying tribute to the NFL, the teams, and this fabulous region that is hosting Super Bowl 50,’ commented Super Bowl host committee CEO Keith Bruce.
As an official sponsor Visa rights package span not just Super Bowl tickets, but also the ability to use the NFL marks, logo and the Super Bowl name.
And despite its US focus around the San Francisco Bay Area itself, in addition to its US rights, this year saw Visa also activate around the Super Bowl in Mexico, Canada, Panama, Brazil, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
For instance, in Brazil Visa ran a social media campaign targeting Visa cardholders with a contest to submit creative phrases about being the best NFL fan–three winners were selected to attend SB50.
While in the LAC region it ran a four-market tour with the Vince Lombardi Trophy, giving cardholders a chance to take photos with the trophy and also share with Visa employees in the region.
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These tech-led innovations – from the light show to stadium and fan zone NFC – sees Visa offers multiple ways to enhance the Super Bowl fan (and cardholder) experience.
Like fellow NFL partner Verizon (see case study), Visa chose not to spend $5m for a 30-second Big Game ad slot on the CBS match telecast, has been an NFL sponsor for more than two decades.
Instead, it decided to make the most of the fact that this year’s game was taking place in its San Francisco home town by choosing to focus on real-world ground game that spanned local events and experiences that revolved around showing off its products (predictable those that involve new technology).
‘Clearly there’s a way to be effective and extend your experiences beyond a 30-second television ad,’ said Visa marketing SVP Lara Hood Balazs.
‘It’s important for us as a brand to have the medium be the message itself. It’s about being everywhere you want to be, being available to consumers where they want to be and where they want to pay, in a (place) where physical and digital are converging.’
Links
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