Matthew Mayes FRSA
VISA EUROPE PARTNERSHIPS CREATIVE STRATEGY

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Visa’s new brand mission is to be the beating heart of payments and is expressed in their new brand mark end line, Always On. Visa Europe wanted to use their partnership assets to both meet their own brand objectives and re-set their relationship with their many member banks across Europe. They needed to be seen as a partner rather than a competitor. This would mean changing Visa Europe’s approach to partnerships as Visa’s existing partnership assets (Olympics and FIFA) allow members to only focus activation around payment related products.
The goal was to look at partnerships that drive cross border spend amongst mass-affluent audience and provide a platform to showcase Visa technology to both member banks and their customers, driving card issuance, trial, usage and premier account sign up.
We were asked to illustrate how, at the point where Visa Europe has a confirmed set of Pan-European sponsorship rights, we can help Visa Europe both activate their new brand and get buy in from member banks.
We looked at two recommendations.
Firstly, museums. Europe has the highest number of iconic museum brands and these museums are increasingly alive with technology and appealing to our mass affluent demographic. For example, in the UK in 2014 increasing cross-border visitors to Museums rose by 2.5 % to 35.1 million with tourists spending a record £3.65 billion in London at attractions such as Tate Modern and the Imperial War Museum. Visitors from North America spent £614million, from Europe £1.56 billion and the rest of the world £1.37 billion.
Our recommended strategy was for Visa to invest in a ‘curator fund’ to enable museums to bid for new exhibition content and then ‘pass through’ exhibition assets to member banks. Visa payment technology would be embedded at points of purchase the museum.
Secondly, skiing. Rather than simply partner with existing winter sports events we recommended creating the first cashless ski resort. We looked at the top 5 resorts across your priority markets in Europe. L’Alpe d’huez (a major resort in France) not only has the volume of visitors, but was also a very progressive resort with multiple activities going on all year round. We then brought to life the experience across the resort for visitors and member banks, complete with activation toolkit for member banks to run campaigns and competitions.
Role and responsibilities: Strategy, Digital Direction and Conceptual Development
GMR Marketing 2015