Visa Inc. has launched a new marketing campaign in support of its “You and 10 Super Bowl Sweepstakes” that takes more direct aim at consumers through strategic integration with social media websites.
The promotion, which includes primetime TV commercials backed by web episodes of the ad’s characters on social media sites and a two-minute web film, invites viewers to imagine how they can win a trip for themselves and 10 friends to the Super Bowl XLVI on Feb. 5 in Indianapolis.
Visa cardholders will get a chance to win each time they use their Visa card through Dec. 27, Visa said in a Nov. 7 press release.
The new ads and supporting social media tell the story of “Ned,” a fictional diehard NFL fan who wins the contest and proceeds to invite 10 friends to the event. The ads depict the journey from his winning purchase to selecting friends to go on the trip and includes Ned’s and the friends’ response to winning the contest.
The campaign features two initial TV commercials, “The Entry” and “Superfan Invitation,” backed by short web-only episodes that expand the story and explore the characters, who are typical NFL fans. The web episodes, which feature the common reality TV format of one-on-one interviews with the camera, and a long-form web film appear on Visa’s NFL Facebook page as well as Visa’s YouTube channel.
Visa says it expanded its vision of the campaign beyond just TV and online ads, by adding a social media “life” to the characters in the ads. Visa sought to create a campaign that reflected NFL fans, who are mild-mannered during the week but turn into excited football fans on the weekend, Alex Craddock, Visa’s head of north America marketing, tells PaymentsSource.
Visa developed the promotion’s content with research that showed that 88% of consumers socialize while watching NFL games, Craddock says. “It’s an incredibly social game,” he says, adding that fans often spend 60 to 90 minutes multitasking on social media networks, texting “smack talk” between friends, checking stats on websites and “really getting into the deeper aspects of the sport. If we were going to do a successful campaign to reach NFL fans in a truly engaging way we needed to come up with something that reflected the social nature of the sport.”
That led Visa to the creative idea of telling the story of an NFL fan who is a Visa cardholder and was lucky enough to win this fantastic trip, Craddock says. The campaign seeks to capture the imagination of NFL fans who might see themselves as winning the contest and as one of the characters in the campaign, he says.
The projection aspect of the campaign is a departure from Visa’s 2010 campaign which featured four older men who had attended every Super Bowl since its inception. Craddock says clearly more fans today can relate to Ned’s story, as it has a wide range of characters that depict the behavior of many NFL fans.
Visa plans to introduce two more ads in the coming weeks, which will also coincide with character-focused web episodes on the social media sites. Craddock says Visa will monitor social media responses to the campaign and will create more ads or web episodes as necessary.
The San Francisco-based card network is taking an “organic” approach to the evolution of the campaign, in that if one character is more popular than others then it would focus on that character to flow with the popularity, says Craddock.
Card marketing analysts note that social media is a popular and effective way to market to consumers in today’s Facebook-oriented environment.
“Clearly Visa is exploring the strategy based on the idea that TV and social media work together” because consumers often use their smart phones, computers and tablets to access the Internet and social media while they are watching TV, says Megan Bramlette, director at Auriemma Consulting Group. “TV is expensive and you’ve only got 30 seconds to deliver your message but you can expand on that with social media.”
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