Barclaycard has retooled a contactless-payments television advertisement to feature use of a mobile phone to make payments in a move that could help to raise awareness of the technology in the United Kingdom. The ad first appeared June 4 during the finale of the popular television show “Britain’s Got Talent.”
The issuer launched the UK’s first contactless mobile-payments system in May (
The new ad, which is running on British TV and in movie theatres, features a man riding a rollercoaster through the city and using his phone to pay for items during this trip. The previous version of the ad showed the man paying with a contactless card instead of a phone.
The issuer also changed the music to Petula Clark’s “Downtown” from the original version that featured the song “More Than a Feeling” by Boston. Switching the song helps to “move the conversation with consumers away from the novelty of contactless payments to the reassurance of a trusted brand helping make consumers’ lives easier on the high street,” Barclaycard said in a news release.
The agency BBH created the ad. Barclaycard global brand director Gary Twelvetree commissioned the ad for the Barclaycard marketing team.
Though the ad is flashy, it may not help speed adoption of mobile payments, according to one analyst, who said the original contactless-payments ad was popular.
“Barclaycard also used innovative marketing techniques, incorporating social media, game apps and other channels,” Zilvinas Bareisis, senior analyst at Celent in London, told PaymentsSource in an e-mail statement. “However, while it certainly increased awareness of contactless, I don't think that it had a material impact on the actual adoption of the technology.”
Bareisis similarly does not expect it will be easy to connect new mobile-payment users directly to the ad campaign, “but it will continue to raise general awareness of mobile and contactless payments,” he said.
Contactless is gaining steam in the UK, as Barclaycard announced in May that Starbucks signed a deal to accept its contactless payments by 2012.
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