MasterCard targets cottagers with sudoku ads

Via Popsicles and Word Searches, in an extension of the PayPass campaign launched last month, MasterCard released a commuter survival guide to help families kill time (and not each other) in traffic.

By Melita Kuburas
July 15, 2009

MasterCard’s summer campaign promoting the PayPass touch-and-pay system in grocery and convenience stores and gas stations extended today with the launch of a Cottage Commute Survival Guide. Promoted through a media blitz, the survival guide is based on a June survey that showed that 54% of cottagers drive up to three hours to get to their destination. The downloadable guide offers tips on what to bring, games to play and how to cope with traffic.

‘Summer is very precious in Canada, certainly this summer is proving to be, and summer weekends and long weekends are few and far between and so we were trying to say ‘if you use your MasterCard Paypass, you’ll be in and out of stores very quickly and that’ll give you more time to do the things you love to do on your summer weekend,” says Lillian Tomovich, VP brand marketing, MasterCard Canada.

Created and supported by Environics Communications, the survival guide is the latest component of an extensive ad campaign for MasterCard that is about saving time in order for consumers to have more summer fun. As part of the blitz, Mastercard is running full-page word search and Sudoku Puzzle ads (developed by MacLaren McCann, with media buying handled by Marketel) in the Globe and Mail as well as local papers in major markets every long weekend this summer.

‘Our media strategy was to be ubiquitous, if you will, in the Canadian marketplace and hit all those places that consumers typically would be pursuing on weekend,’ Tomovich tells MiC.

Subway platform posters and a 50′ wall vinyl, as well as a Union Station ad domination will also run until the end of July. Tomorrow, a MasterCard team will give away Popsicles at Union Station from 3:30 to 5:30 pm, with a MasterCard postcard that drives consumers online for the chance to win a barbecue.

The ad creative explains that MasterCard gives Canadians more time to debate the finer points of watermelon seed etiquette, for instance, and finish off with the classic tagline: ‘Priceless.’ Radio ads will also air on top ten radio stations across Canada.