Using humor, gamification and music we created the ‘Cash vs Cashless’ campaign, built around a hero YouTube video where the benefits of cash and cashless payments would face each other in a rap battle.

The Grannies from Buranovo (known to Eurovision fans from their 2012 rendition of Party for Everybody) and Ambar, an up-and-coming Russian rapper, collided in a rap battle that weighed up the pros and cons of each payment method.

Campaigns tackling payment security often use scare-mongering tactics, while ‘Cash vs Cashless’ took a more light-hearted route, informing people in a fun and unexpected way. The video utilized the latest Russian trend, where brands use rap battles to reach millennial and Gen Z audiences.

An interactive financial game and other supporting content around the YouTube video gave financial advice in a memorable, digestible way. Education on a dry topic has never been more fun and engaging.

Visa published a series of online content to gradually reveal the advantages of cashless payments. Each piece was produced and published to target a different audience segment. The week began with a tech blogger releasing a teaser campaign vlog on the security of online shopping.

The campaign was officially launched with the publication of research results on the positive dynamics in the adaptation of new payment technologies. For the YouTube-viewing demographic, the rap battle was released as the hero content piece.

We then published an online game: are you a coin-paying "grandmother", or a contactless-using "rapper"? For the tech-savvy, Droider vlogged on the safety of contactless payments, and a Visa security expert wrote an op-ed the next day providing advice on how best to combat stereotypes regarding the safety of non-cash payments. To end our campaign, Droider helped us to debunk myths about the security of payments via mobile.

Through a strategic use of storytelling, humor, gamification and music we challenged people’s skepticism towards non-cash payments. Our content was carefully crafted in order to build organic interest in the subject. Our results:

• The rap battle and Droider videos received 1.2m views in less than 4 days

• Based on brand tracking results (a report revealing brand characteristics in comparison with competitors), in Q4 2017, the association with the Visa brand as a safe method of payment increased by three percentage points, the largest quarterly growth in this brand characteristic in 2017.

• According to the Wordstat system (a service by the largest Russian search engine Yandex.ru), there was a surge in searches related to banking cards in the last week of September compared to mid-September

• More than 80k passed the interactive financial game to determine their "financial age"

• People continued the conversation on social media under the hashtag #paysecurely ((#??????????????) - the posts using the hashtag received over 1m impressions

• Media coverage hit all targeted top tier business and trade media such as ??? ???????, ?????, Plusworld, Banki.ru and TheRunet.

• In terms of key messages, all the coverage positively highlighted the trends and messages mentioned in the release. None of the coverage questioned the stats or messages.

o More people trust cashless payments

o More people use smartphones to pay for their purchases

o More people are ready to start using contactless payments