In 2022, Black business founders received only 1% respectively of total US venture capital (VC) funding*, yet Black women are the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs.** To help close the racial wealth and opportunity gap for Black business in the US, Mastercard has pledged $500 million in support from funding, resourcing, and exposure to new potential consumers. Together, Mastercard and the world’s largest digital marketplace, Amazon & Amazon’s Black Business Accelerator Program (BBA), set out to create a space for Black women small business owners to showcase their businesses, tell their stories, and increase and uplift their sales revenue. Beyond that, Mastercard aimed to also inspire other entrepreneurs to kick start their digital businesses with the resources the company has to offer and support them.
*Dominic-Madori Davis, Techcrunch+ 2023
**Harvard Business Review & Global Entreprenuership Monitor 2021
Black women small business owners lacked a platform to showcase their businesses and tell their stories. The massive growth livestream commerce has seen, projected to hit $25B by the end of 2023**, provided an ownable entry point to showcase their businesses, tell their stories, and increase and uplift their sales revenue all at once. Our cutting-edge livestream program provided a massive stage for these Black women small business owners.
This led to our strategy, broken down into three pillars:
Showcase leadership: Reinforce Mastercard’s commitment to helping Black women-owned small businesses grow in the digital economy. We developed a first of its kind program with Amazon Live and Amazon’s Black Business Accelerator Program, to amplify Black women’s voices throughout Black History Month & Women’s History Month with the “She Runs This” campaign. Three celebrity-hosted livestreams with Elaine Welteroth, Tracee Elis Ross, and Coco Jones, highlighted stories and products of Black women-owned small businesses, including Shea Yeleen, EPIC Everyday, Lillie’s of Charleston, Livity Yoga, Mocktail Club, Caribbrew, Partake Foods and Roq innovation who participate in the US Amazon’s Black Business Accelerator (BBA).
Giving a Voice: Showcase Mastercard’s force for good by having each small business owner share the origin stories of their brands, promote their featured products, and connect directly with consumers via an interactive live chat. During the streams, the celebrity talent reiterated how Mastercard’s funding, mentorship, and resources help Black entrepreneurs grow their businesses online. To drive live tune-in, we ran a scaled ad campaign across FireTV and social platforms including amplification from the celebrities’ and Amazon’s handles.
Leading action: To encourage audience participation and consumer support of small businesses, eligible customers saved 25% on any of the products featured in the livestream when they used their qualifying Mastercard. For those unable to watch the stream live, on-demand streams were available for the following two months. To make purchase more seamless, each livestream featured a shoppable carousel featuring products from all featured small businesses.
**Coresight Research
Mastercard & Amazon Lives’ ‘She Runs This’ campaign was an incredible success, garnering a total of $96k in sales for featured Black women Small Business Owners. With 89% of those sales from consumers who had never shopped with the brands before (Benchmark: 57% - 83%).
The Livestreams across the 3 celebrity events reached 2.4MM impressions
Elaine Welteroth: 554k
Tracee Ellis Ross: 692k
Coco Jones’ Live: 1.1MM
Over 71MM impressions were delivered on Fire TV
Elaine Welteroth: 26MM
Tracee Ellis Ross: 25MM
Coco Jones’ Live: 20MM
Earned Media
The AV Amazon blog post touting the partnership reached 864k readers
Over 8.6MM AV impressions served via Amazon Live & celebrity social handles (FB/IG)
Tracee Ellis Ross recapped the amazing work Mastercard did LIVE during 2023’s NewFronts! Watch recap HERE (17:50 mark)
