In 2015, the Electric Zoo festival returned as "Electric Zoo: Transformed," highlighting a new theme, a re-imagined concept, and a creative partnership with SFX Entertainment.
Enter MasterCard. Anxious to drive brand preference amongst a Millennial target for the first time, and armed with a new global SFX sponsorship, MasterCard dove head first into New York's premiere live electronic music festival.
Sponsoring a live event of this nature is table stakes for this Millennial audience. We wanted to make an impact on our target demographic, so we went all-in to prove why being a cardholder really mattered. To be strategic and get in front of our desired audience, we activated in a place where our audience's attention drastically shifted to and over-indexed in 2015: Snapchat.
The week before the festival, we put together an entourage of brand ambassadors, clad in EZoo-themed animal costumes, and paraded them outside of popular NYC clubs. We followed them around all night, Snapchatting their adventure as they danced through the city, surprising MasterCard holders with tickets to our exclusive preview event and VIP tickets to the festival. The entire night of Priceless® Surprises was the perfect opportunity for us to launch our Snapchat channel and share the unfiltered journey with our fans in real time.
The following night, we brought 50 MasterCard holders to an exclusive tour of the festival grounds the night before kickoff, including a private show by electronic music band Keys N Krates. The entire night was once again shared live on our Snapchat channel, while additional video footage was captured in vertical format, to be edited and run as ads in the EZoo Live Story and NYC Local Story the following day.
With video that looked, felt and sounded like the same content being posted by the Millennials in attendance, MasterCard's three Snapchat ads seamlessly integrated into the EZoo and NYC Stories, while aligning the brand with this major passion point.
We wanted our target to know that MasterCard celebrates individuality and innovation among Millennials, through shared transformative (or Priceless, if you will) experiences. After three days and nights of pure, energetic celebration, they knew!The (3) Snapchat Ads we ran garnered an average 2.1 million views and 10.3% completion rate.
