A new, joint prepaid debit card-marketing campaign involving MasterCard Worldwide and Univision Communications Inc. illustrates the companies’ ongoing efforts to bring more Hispanic consumers into the financial mainstream.
Mexican singer and songwriter Paty Cantú is featured in new MasterCard “Priceless” television commercials that show her using a cobranded Univision card in different situations, the companies announced in a June 20 press release.
“We’d thought it be a great way to educate people about the benefits of our prepaid card,” Scott Scovel, Univision vice president of financial services, told PaymentsSource in a June 18 interview.
Cantú’s involvement with the marketing campaign enables cardholders to access exclusive footage of the singer’s concerts and to computer desktop wallpaper, music downloads and other online content through MasterCard’s cardholder website and a forum on Univision.com, according to the release.
Cardholders also have the opportunity to win autographed guitars, CDs and photos at events nationwide.
Cantú also will make appearances at MasterCard-sponsored events later this year in Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and New York.
Univision’s partnership with MasterCard is entering its second year, and the nation’s largest Spanish-language media company continues to find value in the alliance, Scovel said.
The marketing campaign is “opening doors for folks,” he said. “[Those consumers] are now able to access the financial community.”
The latest U.S. Census Bureau results show even more opportunity that many observers might not have realized existed, Scovel said. “From a [marketing prospective], there are now over 50 million Hispanics in the U.S., and I think that has caught a lot of people’s attention,” he said.
Those 50 million Hispanic consumers represent some $1 trillion in purchasing power, a figure that could double in the next 10 years, Scovel added.
For MasterCard, the Univision partnership has enabled the card brand to gain more trust in the eyes of Hispanic consumers, especially among mostly Spanish-speaking families.
“The Spanish market is not the easiest market to reach and be successful in,” Alex Liu, MasterCard vice president of global prepaid solutions, told PaymentsSource in a June 18 interview.
The challenge is finding ways to build trust and to relate closely with the Hispanic market, Liu said.
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