Tattoo Projects Born to Blog

August 13, 2010

MasterCard: Hitting the Streets

MasterCard has been hitting the streets with their new ads to promote their new MasterCard Marketplace website, which offers a shopping venue for MasterCard customers that is packed with discounts. As they would put it, “it’s a smarter way to shop online.

What makes this new campaign interesting is that it is blurring boundaries. In the past, offline and online are two separate worlds. For example, shopping behavior completely changes when done online, so agencies would have to do one type of advertising in one and then take completely different angle in the other. In four of the USA’s biggest cities, MasterCard took a different route with their shop window advertising.

These windows, placed in high traffic retail areas, are interactive displays designed to show the Marketplace site in action. As people walk by, they are filmed and can see mirror image of themselves on the screen. Next the marketplace comes into play. It scans the people and then suggests products, such as sneakers, purses, or clothes, with great discounts. Though this concept is very attention grabbing already, there a whole interactivity aspect of the displays as well. If the people are interested in the product, they are only 2 button presses away from having the latest discounts sent to their emails.

These displays effectively stress passerby engagement over trying to get the greatest possible number of impressions. MasterCard is also bringing the trusting nature of offline shopping behavior to its Internet counterpart. So as the window ads campaign comes to a close this month, will this spur on more companies to push the boundaries or will it prove to be merely an interesting case study?

Tags: advertising, future, innovative

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