With the growth of large, international chain stores, Polish people lose their interest in small business. According to Businode Poland research, our country lost over one hundred thousand since 2009. The other peril comes from online trade, which is developing rapidly. But small companies are afraid of digital revolution and innovation. According to Deloitte Poland, 70% of them believe that it is more of a threat for their companies then opportunity. However, this sector accounts for 70% of Polish GDP and is necessary for the proper functioning of the Polish economy. According to “Small & Medium Business Trends Report”, reaching out to target audiences is most challenging to 60% of business owners.

Business objective: terminalisation of Polish SME sector and increase the number of cashless transactions in SME sector. Communication objectives: building awareness of Mastercard's support to SME companies and secondly - improving the quality of Polish commercial communication.

We teamed up with NGO’s specializing in urban aesthetics: in 2018 Traffic Design Association was recognized by Fast Company for Graphic Design and Data Visualization. Together we created Dobry Znak (good sign - Polish name of the campaign) a digital platform connecting merchants with signboard makers and designers. We promoted it with a competition – every business owner who signed for Mastercard technologies could win a free makeover of his storefront.

Brand’s meaningful role among all the target audiences and sectors is to enable to experience the priceless possibilities. In this case, to empower Polish SME and equalize the chances between large and small companies. Because well performing small companies are crucial for the economy, cardholders, and Mastercard as a brand and as a payment-related company. Small companies have always had problems when it comes to marketing communication. It was bad. It was an amateur. It was ineffective. Not only was it discouraging to enter these points of sale, but it was also making the entire neighborhoods look hideous. With the upcoming landscape act, which obliged all the small companies to adhere to strict communication rules designed for specific cities, we wanted to own this subject and to educate business owners about importance and rules of proper marketing design.

Our marketplace was launched in June 2018 with a stunt: in order to create organic buzz, overnight we changed signboards on one of the busiest streets in Warsaw (PR, organic buzz). Next, we launched a documentary about the process and the results encouraging more business owners to join the program (social media). It was followed by a precise b2b campaign (radio, digital, OOH) driving traffic to our platform.

There, after signing for cashless technologies, they could win a makeover of their storefront.

At the same time, we were advertising our platform among designers (PR, social media).

With a modest media budget of 100k EUR we managed to reach 1/4 of the SMB sector.

Right now we are conducting Phase 2 – this time we gave vote to the people: consumers will chose a winning city which will be facelifted.

In the first month we gathered 25 design studios and reached almost 5 millions Poles (the total population is 38 million). Our site had over 200k unique users. Our competition initiated over 100 makeovers. Retail revenue of the facelifted businesses increased by an average of 35%, while their cashless transactions grew by 50%. 69% (+42% compared to campaign pretest) of SME companies agreed the Mastercard supports small business. 79% of SME companies felt encouraged by the campaign s to renew their signboards. 92% of SME companies wanted our campaign to be continued.

At the same time, we managed to raise awareness of signboards aesthetics and their input on business - more and more Polish cities start to introduce landscape regulations.