Tap For Your Town took Mastercard’s payment technology that was already in every town but that wasn’t being used, and turned it into a mechanic to bring communities together and stimulate economies.

It gave all New Zealanders the chance to bring rugby legend Richie McCaw out of retirement to play a game against their town’s local team. The town with the most taps would win. During the 10-week campaign we measured the 66 towns’ weekly tapping data to create a leaderboard, using this data to fuel the frenzy with more than 400 town-specific creative in geo-fenced social media. When Queenstown emerged victorious, the game was broadcast to the entire nation on Facebook Live.

Tap For Your Town went live on the 17th June, as a fully-integrated campaign (TVC, YouTube, Facebook, OOH, Radio, In-Store, Digital) and kicked off a tapping frenzy across the entire nation.

For 10 weeks, we monitored the real-time tapping data and social media data of 66 New Zealand towns. This allowed us to follow inter-town banter as it happened, and respond with real-time communications to fuel the fierce local rivalries. During the campaign, we created over 400 pieces of town-targeted social creative, including geo-targeted creative, leaderboards and personalised shout-outs from Richie himself.

The highly-anticipated game was promoted for 8 weeks on social media, including Richie’s personal Facebook page, the country’s biggest morning shows, news programs and newspapers.

On the 28th October, Richie’s team took on the Queenstown locals in a broadcast to 480,000 New Zealanders on Facebook Live—making it the biggest game of touch rugby in New Zealand’s history.

This highly-targeted data approach to communications, specifically designed to resonate with our audience on a grassroots level, ensured New Zealand’s highest ever tap transaction rates.

During the campaign period, New Zealand towns together made 13.24 million taps, compared to 8.94 million taps in the same period in 2016 (an increase of 48% year on year).

Monthly taps increased by 17% from 4.52 million to 5.29 million, monthly frequency increased by 11% from an average of 8.1 to 9.0 taps, and the penetration of tapping behaviour increased by 31,000 active cardholders from 531,000 to 562,000.

The campaign reached 97% of New Zealanders while generating 48.3 million impressions (a number 10 times greater than the national population).

These results are projected to deliver over 10 million additional transactions across next 12 months, equating to NZD$212 million of spending in local towns. Money that would’ve otherwise gone to eBay and Amazon.