MasterCard Invites U.S. Workforce to Take #OneMoreDay of Vacation
The global payment company has launched a new travel-centric cross-channel campaign to persuade Americans to take their well-earned time off.
The global payment company has launched a new travel-centric cross-channel campaign to persuade Americans to take their well-earned time off.
The American workforce is notoriously bad at achieving a work/life balance. To remedy this, and encourage Americans to take more vacation, MasterCard has created a cross-channel campaign that taps the power of mobile location-based offers and social media to engage consumers.
According to MasterCard, this year only half of Americans have been on, or are planning a vacation. So the brand’s “One More Day” campaign asks consumers to make a social pledge to take #OneMoreDay off.
“The idea for the ‘One More Day’ campaign was inspired by research that noted that last year American works left 429 million [paid] vacation days on the table,” says a MasterCard spokesperson. “Taking time for what matters most has significant personal benefits and we wanted to address this topic.”
The campaign consists of both traditional and digital elements. In addition to a television commercial, the company has released a mobile concierge app exclusively for U.S. MasterCard World and World Elite cardholders.
By leveraging GPS technology, the mobile app will allow users to get offers from nearby restaurants, stores, and premier hotels in top cities around the world, should they find themselves there on vacation. The app will also offer “city guides” that recommend things to do when users are traveling.
In addition to the mobile app, the campaign includes a social promotion element on Twitter and Instagram, with the hashtag #OneMoreDaySweeps. Consumers who take the #OneMoreDaySweeps pledge have the chance to receive a grand prize trip for four, which is valued at $25,000, to a single destination of the winner’s choice.
The MasterCard team also plans to tap into Tumblr for unique travel-related content.
“This campaign from MasterCard is fundamentally smart,” says Dave Spector, partner of Tambourine, a tourism, travel, and hotel marketing company. “MasterCard is expressing one of its core brand values: vacation is an inalienable universal human right. And it’s also demonstrating that its core brand values are aligned with customers: we exist to help people travel!”
However, Spector notes that American workers may be ambivalent about taking the “#OneMoreDay pledge,” and thus the campaign may produce “sub-optimal results.”
MasterCard declined to share proprietary data regarding the social promotion’s participation rate and engagement rate. But the company tells ClickZ that within the first two days, it had already reached approximately 5,000 mentions on Twitter, and many of its tweets got hundreds of retweets.
“We are very pleased with the initial launch of the campaign in social media,” a MasterCard spokesperson says. “The message is making an impact already, and we think the ongoing efforts will help create the ‘movement’ we are hoping for.”