Mastercard is a forward-thinking, human centered tech company, committed to doing well by doing good and building connections between individuals, businesses and organisations. As an inclusive company, it believes it has a role to play in promoting and driving gender balance to further its position as leaders in the inclusion arena.

We were asked to create a campaign to raise awareness of the Women’s Month and link with Mastercard’s passion points to engage its audience, develop brand intimacy and foster brand connection.

Women’s month in South Africa is a time where women celebrate freedom, empowerment, and gender equality. To mark this significant occasion, we created four short videos showcasing strong, successful South African women, all of whom have real-life stories to tell. Stories of struggle and resilience that every woman can relate, and every man can recognize.

Women's month in South Africa pays tribute to the women in 1956 who marched to the Union Buildings demanding sustainable female empowerment and gender equality. Sixty-five years later, women are now afforded the same opportunities as men in education, economic participation, career development, and the freedom to choose how best to live their lives.

Despite these positive steps, inequality is still as much of an issue in South Africa as it is in other areas of the world. Many of the biggest challenges facing South African women today are educational inequality, inequal income/pay-gap, poverty, and food insecurity. More than half a decade later it is up to brands like Mastercard to highlight what the pioneers on 9th August 1956 have enabled women to do and become today.

She is…Priceless celebrates the selfless, limitless, fearless, and effortless women of South Africa. The everyday woman who is powerful, despite her age, goals, or ethnicity. She is an extraordinary human being who dedicates her life to others and consequently, she is…Priceless.

Women’s month in South Africa is a time where women partner with each other to celebrate freedom, empowerment, and gender equality. To mark this significant occasion, Mastercard chose to collaborate with incredible South African women to create a video campaign telling their real—life stories. Piwo – a rugby player who is an ambassador for the everyday woman. Heather – a midwife dedicated to touching lives every day. Berene – a wine entrepreneur and single mum. Nti – an award-winning chef and influencer. We created four short videos showcasing their stories of struggle and resilience, all presented within deeply relatable content, under the messaging platform of ‘She is…’

Mastercard’s big ambition is to be the brand of choice for women, believing that the only way it can drive even greater impact, is to tell the strong cultural truth that reflects the reality that women experience today.

As a strong supporter of gender equality, Mastercard set out to partner with like-minded grass-roots individuals to create an emotional and thought-provoking content campaign, while linking to the brand’s Priceless platform, passion points and content pillars such as culinary, rugby and SME’s. The integrated campaign ran across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Youtube in equal measure, as well as Mastercard’s Priceless platform to expand the audience reach. The campaign drove donations to World Vision South Africa, building on the humanitarian aspect.

Media focused its digital targeting to areas of interest that were relevant to the four women who were the face of the campaign, ranging from rugby, wineries, healthcare, cooking and SMEs.

We showcased four women ambassadors and the inspirational roles they play in society, through a series of emotive videos. The videos focus on ‘ordinary’ women who are doing extraordinary things with their lives, working in what is often a routine role, yet with an extraordinary amount of passion.

The messaging throughout the campaign is around the question of ‘Who is she?’. We answer that question in several ways, all of which could relate to any woman regardless of who she is. “She is…strong, inspiring, an ambassador for the everyday women, she is a team player, a role model, she is limitless…she is Priceless.”

Working with Egg, our partner production agency in South Africa, we created a script and storyboard based on a mix of existing and unique footage. We led with the script, then storyboarded the video content around it, basing each individual video on a consistent and recognizable format.

There was an increase in viewability benchmarks across all platforms with the viewability rate increase +33% vs. benchmark. YouTube was the best performing in driving viewability rate followed by Facebook and Twitter. Twitter’s viewability rate was at par with the benchmark and showed an improvement of +4%.

Views and VTR were the main KPIs and the campaign has outperformed these effectiveness metrics, recording 6.7Mn views which is 332% more than expected. Youtube and Twitter accounted for 75% share of views. The campaign recorded one of the highest VTRs so far in the South African market, driven mainly by Youtube and Twitter, with a VTR of 69.33%

Following Mastercard’s social engine approach, the donate element recorded strong media deliverables. Audience who had engaged with the video campaign were retargeted with ads to encourage them to donate to the cause. A total of 86,000 clicks were recorded for this.