Challenge
Mastercard needed a more localised marketing strategy, as well as a new process for rolling out the findings from best practice case studies within local markets.
Approach
First, we performed an audit of the current marketing approach. This was synthesized from internal and external reports, in order to benchmark Mastercard's performance against its competitors, as well as help us understand gaps in current state for development of regional plans.
We facilitated a workshop which defined implications for further plan development.
We then consolidated market-level activity plans, and supported three markets with the development and streamlining of plans laddering up to the global strategy.
Kantar consultants were able to distill core initiatives and priorities by country and by business priorities, and make links between all the must-win battles.
Insight
A new planning process was initiated, giving Mastercard a clear global view of the challenges facing the markets. Eleven brand plans were crafted to address the identified brand challenges. We also developed a consolidated 2017 Asia Pacific marketing plan for presentation to the global CMO.
Impact
The work had a huge impact on both the process for creating, and the content of, the marketing strategy for Mastercard in Asia Pacific. We co-created guiding principles for full plan development, and aligned marketing must-win battles with regional and local priorities and product strategic pillars.
Thanks to the Kantar work, a shared point of view on how marketing works together with communications was created, and we developed a model for Mastercard to maximize the impact on major initiatives.
We left the client with an easily digestible plan to win in digital by scaling through key channels, touch points and markets, as well as recommendations on the allocation of advertising and media budget. We also developed a toolkit to help them leverage and amplify best practice case studies, and a comprehensive approach for linking the campaign idea to the different stakeholders’ roles, execution steps, local nuances, budget breakdown and key learnings.