The need

In 2004, MasterCard came to us as a major sponsor of the European Champions League (UEFA), featuring 32 leading clubs from the major European football association, but they were unsure as to how to leverage that sponsorship to make a personal connection with current and potential cardholders among the viewing audience.

Our advice

As MasterCard obviously wants to encourage people to spend on their cards while travelling abroad, 'travel' itself is a good fit with their global sponsorship properties. We decided to provide something useful for travellers to the finals in Turkey but were given a very short deadline to deliver a solution.

The solution

With just 14 days between the semi-finals and the final of the 2005 Cup, we decided to 're-jacket' our guide to Istanbul with a MasterCard cover and insert 16 pages at the front about the finalists and the tournament, as well as relevant advertisements for MasterCard. This created a thing of value - a relevant guidebook - that would be kept on hand in the days leading up to the final, and even be seen as a souvenir of sorts post-event. As it carried the MasterCard brand, there was no doubt as to which company was providing this value and MasterCard was quickly associated with helping people in what was, to many, a new and unknown city.

In those 14 available days, we added the special pages about the finalists to the guide, got it printed and delivered it from our printers to Istanbul. 15,000 copies of the guide were then given out to fans as they arrived at the airport.

Results

We know we made an impression on a lot of football fans and that spending on MasterCard increased significantly during the Cup finals… (and as Liverpool won, everyone we knew was happy too!).