Three years ago, MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga challenged his team to transform the 45 year-old B2B financial services giant into a more consumer-focused payments technology company. From a communications standpoint, MasterCard was squarely B2B; the opportunity was to shift engagement online and develop a direct relationship and dialogue with consumers and influencers. Early data revealed more than 30 Million online conversations weekly related to MasterCard and its industry; however, MasterCard was engaged in just 1% of those discussions. Further, commerce was shifting online and increasingly via social media channels.

To move beyond traditional “listening”, MasterCard created the Conversation Suite – a dynamic, global insights and engagement engine that shifted the company from monitoring social and traditional media to applying purposeful listening to inform business decisions and foster more impactful communications.

During the first 3 months since launch in May 2012, our engagement increased by 400%. Partner and stakeholder feedback from announcements can be reported back to business owners to enhance messaging as well as our products and solutions. By unifying social and traditional media monitoring, the company is able to save money and the suite of tools has aided the company in winning new business by exposing and offering access to the tool.

The MasterCard Conversation Suite is appropriate for the PR Lions as it exemplifies the best use of measurement and analytics – relevant, consistent and timely data and insights for all conversations related to MasterCard and the industry and deep intelligence to inform business decisions.

The Conversation Suite’s centerpiece is a sophisticated tool that can analyze the conversations taking place online for tone and trending topics. The Conversation Suite itself spans beyond this tool to include an innovative workspace. Regular “Social Jam” events are held in the Conversation Suite with employees and partners to leverage the data and insights and infuse social business throughout the organization. The Conversation Suite continues to be a coveted workspace and venue to hold both internal and external events related to social media.

Three months after launch, our engagement increased by 400%. On an average week we generate around 20,200 mentions with a potential exposure of over 70 million users.

Initial exposure and interest in the data has resulted in the development of a dedicated Partner Plus program in which MasterCard works with partners to leverage data and conduct social media programs. The data and insights derived from the Conversation Suite helps us refine campaigns in real-time. Partner and stakeholder feedback from announcements can be reported back to business owners to enhance our messaging as well as our products and solutions. By unifying social and traditional media monitoring, we are able to save money for the company and our impressive suite of tools wins us new business through our Partner Plus program. The greatest advantage of the Conversation Suite is that implementation has brought benefits to MasterCard beyond usual public relations measurement statistics.