MasterCard to bring e-marketing engine here

Mumbai:

MasterCard

will bring its ‘

Priceless Cities

’ programme to India, as part of its initiative for creating experiences to promote the brand. The company will also bring its

digital marketing engine

which will enable it to target customers in the right places with the right message.

Under the programme, MasterCard has identified cities and provided experiences which include a visit to the

Louvre

in Paris after closing hours, or access to the

Chichen Itza

pyramid in Mexico during a full moon.

Speaking to TOI, Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing officer, MasterCard, said that the Indian affluent segment has become more internationally aware and is now increasing their cross-border travel and transactions. “That’s where our Priceless Cities will really come in very nicely. Instead of just doing tourist stuff, they can do something cool like a once-in-lifetime experience,” said Rajamannar. As part of its shift in its ‘Priceless’ strategy from storytelling to providing experiences, MasterCard has created various platforms for these experiences — Priceless Cities,

Priceless Surprises

, Priceless Causes and Priceless Specials. While the surprises, causes and specials are for all segments the cities campaign is for the affluent.

“We have invested in an experiential marketing company and that sources experiences for us,” said Rajamannar. More importantly, MasterCard — as the largest sponsor of events — is able to leverage these sponsorships to provide experiences to top customers. According to Rajamannar, India is a very sophisticated market and cannot be categorised as developing or developed market. While it is a nascent market in terms of electronic payments, there is a large population of youngsters who are digital natives and form one of the world’s largest base of smartphones. Digital payments are expected to be half a trillion in India by 2020

“With mobile phones, we can be more intelligent in targeting the customer,” said Rajamannar. “This is why we are deploying our real-time digital marketing which enables us to reach out in a hyper-targeted, hyper-local and hyper-relevant fashion.”

According to Rajamannar, promotions by themselves cannot bring about behaviour change. “If you want the customer to have a trial you can run a promotion. But when the customer tries the product, the experience should be so good that they stick to it even after the promotion is over,” said Rajamannar. But if the experience is not intuitive, seamless or convenient, the customer will return to his original behaviour, he said.


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