Insight
Visa was looking to generate awareness for its Premium Products and their related benefits – particularly access to travel insurance and Visa's Luxury Hotel Collection – ultimately resulting in increased usage. Visa wanted to become the preferred paying method for travel in Latin America. It wanted its cardholders to feel that Visa is the perfect travel companion and encourage them to use their Visa cards throughout the travel planning process and while traveling both domestically and internationally. The brand wanted to connect with consumers and make them aware that their Visa card offers them great benefits at no extra cost.
Visa wanted to communicate with customers in a way that would be representative of its brand character: sociable, reliable, joyful, successful, smart and innovative. The main consumer takeaway should be for cardholders to feel that they can travel with peace of mind because Visa offers them and their immediate family travel protection at no additional cost.
Strategy
Visa's customers in the Latin American region are affluent professionals who have one thing in common: a passion for travel. They like to explore places, cultures, flavours and towns at home and abroad, and want to feel protected so they can make the most of their experiences.
Discovery Channel created a campaign on TLC which aimed to provide a more exclusive way for its viewers to experience Latin America's top destinations. It was looking to reach the affluent traveller and educate him/her about the benefits offered by Visa's Premium Products, while providing an enjoyable way to learn about top destinations in the region and promote travel across Visa's key markets in Latin America.
The consumer takeaway it looked for was: "Visa gives me access to the best of Latin America's top cities". In order to reinforce Visa’s brand character as a sociable, reliable, joyful, successful, smart and innovative brand, Discovery sought out the ideal candidate to be the host of the campaign: Sonia Gil. Sonia is an entrepreneur who launched a company that teaches people new languages in fun, engaging ways. She’s also a traveller who takes people on her trips by creating original, short format content which is then posted on her own blog and YouTube channel. She has an adventurous spirit anyone can relate to, and she had a natural, fresh way of engaging with the affluent traveller. The campaign was entitled “Check In with Visa”, aligning it with the theme of travel and giving it a feeling of exclusivity – when you check in with Visa, you’ll have an all access pass to the best destinations in Latin America.
Execution
Visa engaged its customers via social conversations on Facebook and Twitter to identify their favourite Latin American destinations. Armed with those results, Discovery Channel selected its best travel and tourism programmes that covered those destinations, showcasing one-of-a-kind attractions, restaurants and unique what-to-do’s. It built a programming stunt comprised of 27 episodes of its best travel shows and brought them to the audience with the "Check in with Visa" title over the course of nine consecutive weekends. It also created a series of shorts with host Sonia Gil, where she introduces the audience to the "Check In with Visa" travel hour on TLC.
Leading up to each weekend, it had a customised tune-in message with Sonia where she let the audience know which destinations would be covered on “Check In with Visa” that upcoming weekend. Commercial capsules featuring Sonia were created to communicate Visa’s primary cardholder benefits: insurance services and access to its Luxury Hotel Collection. These capsules were rotated during the programme’s commercial breaks on TLC, and also on Discovery Channel and Discovery Home & Health. In-programme messages appeared on-screen reinforcing these benefits and driving traffic to the campaign website where viewers could learn more.
Results
The results surpassed expectations. Comparing the on-air Latin feed performance of TLC against the main target shows a growth of 133% in ratings between 2012 and 2013.
The strategic alliance also proved to be successful given that Visa became the preferred payment method on Despegar.com (the main travel e-commerce website in Latin America) with a 51.28% share of all transactions. This represents a growth of 16 percentage points in just four months.
Purchases from all the countries to the specific destinations increased on an average of 67%. The largest increase came from Venezuelan consumers who raised their use of Visa on Despegar.com by 150%. Despegar.com reported that the sales of airline tickets and hotel reservations, during the time of the campaign, were the highest peak of the year.