Company Profile 
Grand Central Station is more than 2,400 miles from Vancouver, but that didn’t stop Visa from bringing the Winter Olympics to New Yorkers this month.
The company has blanketed Grand Central’s subway corridor with 3D video and static images from its Olympic-themed advertising campaign, “Go World.” It’s just one in a series of examples of how the company is approaching this Olympics differently than any other in its 20-year history of associating with the Games.
Vancouver marks the first Olympics for which Visa has planned a marketing program since it became a public company in 2008. As a result, the company is working more diligently than ever before to deliver a strong return on investment, said Visa Chief Marketing Officer Antonio Lucio.
“Accountability is the word,” Lucio said. “When we were an association we insisted on driving transactions through the system. But the moment we became public every investment had to be justified.”
That emphasis led Visa to make several marketing changes, including: adopting its first global marketing campaign; increasing its consumer-based promotions; broadening its digital efforts; tailoring its messaging and signage in Vancouver; and developing centralized hospitality services to work with customers and clients worldwide.
“What you’re seeing is the evolution of our marketing approach,” Lucio said. “We are approaching Vancouver much differently than we approached Beijing.”
During the Beijing Games, Visa divisions developed different marketing campaigns for their specific regions. The company reviewed the effect of each campaign afterward and decided to centralize its efforts with a single, global campaign. It chose the 2008 “Go World” campaign used in the U.S. marketplace because it had the most positive effect on brand equity, Lucio said.
The “Go World” tagline is being used in 21 markets worldwide. Each market has the ability to insert its own imagery to give the campaign regional appeal.
With that campaign as a foundation, Visa layered on other new marketing efforts for the Vancouver Olympics. It increased the proportion of its marketing spend devoted to consumer promotions from 20 percent in 2008 to 50 percent in 2010. The bulk of that increase is devoted to its promotion entering registered Visa card users into a sweepstakes to win lifetime tickets to the Olympics.
That promotional campaign will run throughout the Games, becoming the first consumer promotion to do so, Lucio said.
Visa developed an extensive digital campaign to complement the consumer promotion. The company has its first dedicated YouTube channel for the Olympics, Lucio said, and the “Go World” channel will be the first place that Visa releases new commercials.
The company also collaborated with its athletes in each region to film behind-the-scenes footage, compile downloadable photos and design a playlist of songs for purchase at its site, www.visa.com/goworld. Making athlete songs available for purchase was key because it allows Visa to drive and track consumer purchases with its cards, Lucio said.
“In our category, rather than just be an awareness and engagement vehicle you can literally close a transaction because e-commerce is one of the fastest-growing areas of the market today,” Lucio said. “Every angle in our digital campaign can translate into the possibility of a transaction.”
Visa put similar importance on transactions when it made its decisions about where to buy signage in Vancouver. Rather than purchase billboards across the city, as it did in Beijing, it concentrated its marketing in stores and at retail to encourage consumers to use Visa, Lucio said.
The company’s global approach to its marketing campaign at the 2010 Olympics extends to its hospitality work, as well. For the first time, it is running a centralized hospitality program for all of its regions.
The program is overseen by Visa Head of Global Sponsorship Management Michael Lynch and managed by SportsMark. It will service three waves of clients, consumers and company directors.
“They actually design the hospitality program for the entire world so there’s consistency in the way we do with consumers and customers around the globe,” Lucio said. “That’s a more effective way of doing business.”
From SportsBusiness Daily