Small Business is increasingly recognized as a large growth opportunity for MasterCard. Creating over 60% of the new jobs in the US, small businesses are a catalyst for positive social change.
VaynerMedia's objective was to position MasterCard as a leader in this growing segment by developing a social media-first campaign that connected MasterCard Business to innovation, and showed how MasterCard fuels the entrepreneurial spirit for small business owners. Our goal was to inspire MasterCard card usage and build brand preference amongst our small business target demographic.
After a successful SXSW earlier in 2015 where MasterCard gave entrepreneurs the opportunity to present a Priceless Elevator Pitch for the chance at funding from MasterCard, we wanted to leverage and expand upon the Priceless Elevator construct, but specifically for small business owners..
While only those in attendance at SXSW had the opportunity to pitch, when Small Business Week arrived in early May, we took the concept to Twitter, opening the opportunity to small business owners across the United States.
Small business success often hinges on the ability to be a first mover in the market, so in that spirit, we asked small business owners to submit their "elevator pitch" via Twitter's brand new video response tool. We gave them :30 to tell us how $15,000 from MasterCard could elevate their business.
We then put together an all-star judging panel, consisting of Suzy Welch (Author/Business Journalist), Mari Smith (Facebook Marketing Expert), Pat Flynn (Entrepreneur/Author) and Jay Singer (SVP, Group Head Global Small and Medium Enterprises, MasterCard), and asked them to select a grand prize winner.
LuminAID, a company whose mission is to make light more sustainable, affordable and available to everyone, rose to the top and won our #PricelessPitchContest. We then visited the LuminAID team at their Chicago office and filmed a piece of video content, telling the story of the company and how they would utilize the #PricelessPitchContest prize money to take the next step with their business.
We then posted the LuminAID video on Twitter and Facebook, which became our hero piece of content to wrap up the campaign.
The campaign garnered:
- 14,666,678 Total Impressions
- 873,196 Total Engagements
- 1,700,625 Total Video Views
