Best Practice Case

MasterCard Roundtable: The "Priceless" Campaign

This a branding success story about MasterCard. Unlike Visa and American Express, the MasterCard brand
is poorly positioned in consumers’ minds. This interview conducted by the Advertising Educational
Foundation traces how McAnn Erickson (the world largest advertising agency) re-positioned the brand
through the “Priceless” campaign. Read the interview below and think about the following questions:

1. Describe the positioning of American Express, Visa, and MasterCard before the “Priceless”
campaign.
2. Describe the research studies McCann has used in the (re-)positioning or branding of MasterCard.
What insights did they learn?
3. How were the research insights used by the creative team at MCCann to design the “Priceless”
campaign?
4. How do you explain the success of the “Priceless” advertising campaign? What factors contributed
to this success?

The original interview and the ads featured in the campaign are accessible at:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/asr/v007/7.1roundtable.html

MasterCard Roundtable: The "Priceless" Campaign

Craig Bagno, Amy Fuller, Joyce King Thomas, John Kottmann, Linda M. Scott

L. SCOTT: This issue of Advertising & Society Review will focus on materialism. We are taking a different look at what human-object relations are like, to take a
more complex, more grounded approach to why people buy the things that they buy and what they accomplish through their goods. It's a much more humane,
softer approach than the more judgmental attitude that tends to characterize the academic literature. We wanted to do MasterCard because we thought the
campaign reflected that more humane, softer attitude toward understanding why people consume.

So today I'd like you to talk, in general terms, about your role in the campaign, what you were trying to accomplish, and what influences spurred you, either
strategically or creatively, to do this campaign or to do particular executions. What I'd like to do first is to go around and have everyone say who they are, how they
got involved in the campaign, and what their role has been. Okay, shall we start with you, Joyce?

J. KING THOMAS: Joyce King Thomas. Chief creative officer of McCann now. I was a group creative director when we created the campaign, and the writer of the
first few ads.

A. FULLER: Amy Fuller. I'm a group executive for MasterCard. I had nothing to do with the start of the campaign because I've only been around MasterCard for
about two years. But now I'm responsible for marketing in Canada, the US, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

J. KOTTMANN: John Kottmann. Co-director of strategic planning in McCann New York. At the time, I suppose I was a VP strategic planner. A lot of people went
into that pitch from a strategic perspective and I was lucky enough to be around to contribute to it.

C. BAGNO: I'm Craig Bagno, SVP and group account director. I'm now responsible for "The Americas," which is the US, Canada, and Latin America/Caribbean.
I've been in the business for six years, so I missed the first couple of years. I started as an account supervisor, actually, on US business.

L. SCOTT: Why don't we start out by talking about the beginning, since two of you were there and can talk about the origins, strategically and creatively.

J. KOTTMANN: At the time, to boil it down very simply, what we looked at when we came to MasterCard was the challenge that this category had always traded
on aspiration and materialism to some degree. There were two brands in the category, Visa and American Express, who had very strong imagery surrounding
what they were about and what their position was in relation to materialism, and what buying and spending and consumption were all about. Visa tended to be
what we would call a more extrinsically-driven brand. It was more about conspicuous consumption and had lived that way for a long time, with its Everywhere you
want to be campaign in the 1980s, etc. And I think we all know what American Express was all about—privilege and exclusivity. Both wear on their sleeves a
degree of conspicuous consumption and MasterCard was, at the time, a bit undefined. So we did a lot of consumer research in a lot of different ways—projective
techniques, qualitative and quantitative studies, different tools that we have here—and we found that MasterCard was really lacking a sense of aspirational cachet
as a brand. One thing it did have at its core was a sense of genuineness, a sense of pragmatism, almost earnest in a way, for the people who were heavy users of
the brand. So that was setting up where the brand was at the time.
 Visa and American Express.

Then we needed to look at where consumers were at the time. Consumers were beginning to shift in what was most important to them, why they were consuming
things. And kind of what materialism was changing to. What we found, with Yankelovich research, Roper research, our own research, and research from many
other sources, was that there was a shift away from that conspicuous consumption where those two brands were living. There was a movement toward doing
things that satisfied you intrinsically and to experiences such as having control of your life, having a good marriage, having a great job in terms of being satisfied at
work. These were becoming ever more important—and even, in a way, becoming more important than the amount of money you made or the signs of clothes,
watches, credit cards, all those sorts of things. In some cases, people were saying, "I'll trade off my salary to have more free time." I'm not sure that everyone here
does that or wants to do that.

We were comparing trends over a ten- or fifteen-year period. Yankelovich actually began adding in attributes in the early 1990s, to try to capture some of these
trends, because they weren't even on the books. That was a sea change in terms of what values were important to consumers and where they were going. So
they were replacing the watch and the designer clothing with these other types of things. Now the question is, did designer clothing and watch sales go off? Of
course not. You still bought that watch. But the meaning behind the purchase was beginning to change. And the positioning of the brands marketing watches was
beginning to change, too. In other words, the value of the consumption of even luxury items was beginning to be sold very differently. And that was incredibly
important in terms of where we were from both a brand perspective and a consumer perspective.

In the category of credit cards, we found that people were incredibly justified for the spending that they did on their credit cards. So it was always, "Bob down the
road is the one who gets in trouble with his credit card. I'm the one who is quite satisfied buying things that matter," and this was connecting back to the cultural
observation that people are consuming for more important reasons. "I use my credit card responsibly and we buy things for the family; we take certain trips for
experiences." So we put all of that together and then looked at where MasterCard was. Even though MasterCard had a limited amount of imagery, the brand had
some values to it that were more along the lines of this new trend among consumers. This allowed us to get down to a strategic idea: MasterCard is the best way
to pay for everything that matters. It means it's really not about the money, it's about the experiences in life. Suddenly, it doesn't look like those other two brands
can say that very easily because they are out there talking about the expensive trip to Europe, or the new restaurants, all these very extrinsic kinds of things.
That's what got us down to, in very short form, the strategic idea; that was only about a quarter of the way there because, of course, how do you express that out
in the world now, where consumers are changing?

J. KING THOMAS: The shift in people's attitudes was very dramatic over a ten-year period. The symbols of success went from designer clothing and watches to
spending more time with your family. It was unbelievable, the shift.

J. KOTTMANN: It was almost a pure replacement of some of these things that said success was buying a great watch or having this or that, or staying in a hotel,
or having a gold credit card, to having a great marriage, being in control of your life, having a fulfilling job. All of these things were suddenly starting to take over.

C. BAGNO: And if you look at the data now, that phenomenon is just that much more pronounced today.

J. KOTTMANN: It's gotten more specific in a way. People are talking about their own—what they are calling "internal" —rhythms and pulls now. Listening to
yourself. Even beyond that—defining yourself. It's not just the idea that you feel you should be "doing your own thing," but now that you're the architect of your own
destiny. That's been pulled through even more since the time the campaign started.

J. KING THOMAS: We developed creative ideas as the strategy was being developed. We'd create work, then refine the strategy, then do more work. It was an
iterative process. The first 'aha' was the tag-line. A creative director named Jonathan Cranin wrote the line, "There are some things money can't buy. For
everything else, there's MasterCard." He showed me the line and I thought it was really great. But it wasn't as easy to execute as you would think it would be. At
the time, we were developing the campaign, credit cards were being accepted in lots of new places. Like baseball stadiums. So we started thinking about how we
could communicate that you can use MasterCard in new places plus grab the emotional high ground. We came up with the idea of a grocery list of the things that
you can buy with your MasterCard—and ending with something that money and MasterCard can't buy. Something priceless. It was like a cross between a haiku
and grocery list.

Trip to India.

J. KOTTMANN: Because of the rationalization and the justification, the same things continued to happen but why you do those things changed, really. In fact, the
third or fourth spot was a very expensive trip to India for a couple that was celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, which was testament to the fact that
we could immediately go out and start talking about what the purchases were, but do it in a way that was actually within this world and connecting to where
consumers were.

A. FULLER: I think one of the interesting things about the genesis of the campaign was that it was in the context of a pitch. You probably know that it is very
unusual for a campaign that is used to pitch a piece of business be the campaign that actually finally airs. So not only was this the campaign that aired, but it's
eight years later, and it's airing everywhere in the world.
J. KOTTMANN: One other thing I might just quickly add to the history is that, for MasterCard at the time, the target that was given to us was what the financial
services category would call "credit revolvers." Credit revolvers are people who carry a credit balance and don't always necessarily pay it off each month. So
"revolvers" was sort of a general, functional description of the target that we were trying to reach. As a part of the strategic process, we were working to define a
"conceptual target" for MasterCard. A conceptual target is a target definition that factors in psychographics—not just demographics. In other words, we were kind
of looking for the MasterCard equivalent of "Soccer Moms."

All the research that we'd done led us to put one word in front of the word "revolvers," which was the word "good." Seems simple, but it changed everything. That
one word gave us our conceptual target, "good revolvers," and it sort of took away that stigma of using a credit card because you're bad and suddenly you're going
to get into debt. It allowed us to kind of shift the perspective on the category. Instead of the focus being on spending and fear of debt, the focus was on access to
meaningful experiences. So that was big.

Since then the conceptual target has evolved from "good revolvers" to "good spenders" because of the growth of products like debit and prepaid where there is no
revolving. But that insight was and is a very important part of the whole strategy and unlocking that consumer piece of it.

L. SCOTT: Is this trend toward buying things for "nonmaterial" reasons something that others would have noticed?

Life Takes Visa.

C. BAGNO: It's well-known syndicated research and it's absolutely true that others would have noticed the trend. If you read the press clippings of the new Visa
campaign, it's very clear that they're now reading the same research, the same polls.

Austin Powers movie trailer.

J. KING THOMAS: Another reason that you know it's a trend is that the campaign caught on. The campaign was picked up and used everywhere—in Jay Leno
monologues, comic writers would use it for a sitcom, like a preview. Filmmakers asked us if we could use the format to introduce Austin Powers II, and we said,
"Yes!" Pop culture would never have absorbed the idea if it wasn't truly relatable.

J. KOTTMANN: Once we got to the strategy, we were only 25 percent of the way there. Because even if it's a smart idea, it's only a book report until you can
execute it and everybody kind of "gets it." What was, and still is, brilliant about the Priceless campaign is the idea of that word, "priceless." It was this word in our
culture that was sitting over here. People still used it, but when it got brought out and to center again, it's like, "What a great... Yes, that is priceless." We all knew
that word, that idea, and suddenly it's being used again. You watch a baseball game and the sports announcer is using it. You watch late-night TV and the
comedian is using it. And it's just caught on like wildfire.

C. BAGNO: Jay Leno has done 14 parodies. Letterman has done maybe 4. The Simpsons, Will & Grace, Spin City, King of Queens, Third Rock from The Sun,
Saturday Night Live, The Today Show, MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, ESPN, CNN, Monday Night Football, NBC Nightly News, the New York Times. It is a very long
list.

David Letterman baseball parodies.

 Jay Leno Enron and Republican Convention parodies.

CNN parody.

VH1 Bob Dylan and MC Hammer parodies.

Will and Grace promotion.

Spin City and The Simpsons parodies.

Parody Rip compilation.

A. FULLER: You see these parodies everywhere, globally.

L. SCOTT: Can you talk to us a little bit more about how this has played globally?

A. FULLER: Wherever we do consumer marketing and advertising, we use the Priceless brand idea. So now it's in 105 countries and forty-eight languages. We
think it is the most global campaign in the consumer marketplace, period. It works because it is based in human truth, which makes the idea easily adaptable
market by market by market. One of the things McCann did early on was to initiate a projective qualitative technique dubbed "What Matters" research. Consumers
would be asked to talk about "what mattered" in their lives, as opposed to talking about the brand. In each of the major markets we did advertising, we could hone
in on the content, exactly what would be "priceless" in that place. It has worked very well in our core markets, as measured by copy testing scores and in tracking
measures. For example, we see awareness goes up. We've got a lot to compete against, because our competitors are also big spenders. Financial services in
general, including bank spending on just their credit card businesses, is really significant, so we have a lot of marketplace activity to break through. We can see
that it is the consistency of the idea that makes the MasterCard campaign efficient. In every market, we score far above consumer advertising norms. When we
compare our work, it is not just within our category, because in real life, when people are in their living room watching TV, we are competing against marketing
from soft drinks, beer, and cars. And we are not in a high interest category—it is an essential category, but it's of very low interest. I was just saying to Joyce over
lunch that I think the brilliance of the idea is its ability to continue generating hundreds of spots. McCann has created more than three hundred commercials on this
idea—executions have evolved over time while the consistency of the original consumer insight has been maintained. And as John and Craig were saying, the
campaign idea rests on what has been a systemic, not cyclical, change in values. The change could have been cyclical, bouncing back to materialism, but that
hasn't happened yet.

J. KOTTMANN: It could have been just domestic too.

A. FULLER: Yes, it could have been just the US. But while specific values may be different market by market, the idea still works. And I think that's the other secret
to success. The idea was not to create commercials that can run everywhere in the world. The approach was to create a consistent brand idea and brand
framework, and if a specific commercial can work outside its home market, great, but it is not a requirement we put on our commercials. For example, one of our
favorite executions which we ran in the US and Canada came out of Sweden. Other great executions have come out of Hungary and have run in many, many
markets. But that's not the intention. The intention is to do brilliant work locally. Of course there are markets with minimal marketing spending where it wouldn't
make sense to create spots from scratch, but the fact that this idea is able to travel is money in the bank. The objective is really connecting to consumers.

Big Catch: Swedish and US versions.

Rendezvous: Hungarian and Canadian (English) versions.

J. KOTTMANN: This is really important from a business standpoint because at the heart of it, Priceless's efficiency comes from its relevance and
"breakthroughness," not from creating two-thirds of the spots here and trying to force them around the world. It's a different way to think about it. Probably 60 to 70
percent of our work is created locally, which gives it much more connection with the culture it runs in.

J. KING THOMAS: We've found that in all cultures, there are things that money can't buy, things that are priceless in peoples' lives. So you just have to find out
what is priceless in that culture. I think the most interesting market is Japan, where there is no word for the concept "priceless" and so they use the English word,
"priceless." I've been in focus groups where people are speaking in Japanese and they use the word, "priceless." The word has meaning there now. The campaign
has given it meaning.

A. FULLER: The globality is significant to MasterCard because one of our competitive differentiators is our global structure. Our competitors do not have global
structures and/or global presence in the way we do. So the globality of the thought, and the fact that it is so effective and efficient, market by market by market, is
quite strategic to our business.

L. SCOTT: I understood you to say that those things people would consider priceless would be different from place to place. In other words, there would be this
concept, but what would be priceless would be different. Could you talk to me a little bit about what those differences are?

J. KOTTMANN: That is the reason why we create so many spots locally. The experiences are inherently local. Some are more universal and some can be
idiosyncratic to the culture, and you want to capture that, but the campaign idea is still the same market to market.

Bienvenue au Quebec.
A. FULLER: We just finished doing a spot to run in francophone Canada. It has a French couple going to Quebec and traveling around, speaking in French to the
Quebec natives. Yet they don't understand each other because the slang is different and the way words are used are different. In the end, they do understand
each other. They are long lost cousins, so to speak, because Quebecois feel an ancient tie to France. Watching this, as a speaker of French French vs. Quebecois
usage, I find it incomprehensible. So you couldn't run that spot anywhere in the world. It nails a Quebecois insight about the connectivity you feel to your ancient
homeland back through generations to France—a "priceless" experience that is unique to Quebec.

L. SCOTT: Are there any personal favorites that you guys have of this campaign? You've given me great examples from around the world. I have personal
favorites and one of them is the dog one. It'd be kind of fun to hear why people like particular ones.

J. KING THOMAS: It's a kind of Rorschach test! I love the dog trilogy. It's a very touching series of commercials that begins with Badger, our doggy hero, getting
lost. His family is on vacation and accidentally leaves him in the Redwood Forest. People buy him things as he travels across the country. Food, water, toys. I like
it because it's about people's generosity and humanity. And because it's magical. It's a little bit of a fairy tale, a little bit about giving, and the dog is an adorable
Boston Terrier. How can you lose?

Dog Trilog: Lost Dog, On the Road, and Home.

J. KOTTMANN: I love the trilogy, and I love the first spot we did, which is "Baseball Stadium." And the arrested development part of me likes this other spot where
this kid comes into a guitar shop. He's probably about nine years old. He's looking at the guitar and he sheepishly asks the guy behind the counter if he can play it.
He picks it up and the next thing you know, he's smashing the guitar on the floor and the line is, "rock and roll: priceless."

Baseball Stadium and Guitar.

A. FULLER: It didn't air extensively, but it's available online, bootleg.

L. SCOTT: Why didn't it air very much?

J. KING THOMAS: There were definite questions. It was tested and there were people who loved it, but also people who hated it.

A. FULLER: It had really high copy testing scores.

J. KING THOMAS: But there was definitely a polarizing nature to it. Polarization is not what this campaign has been about. The spot won a lot of awards, ran in
Australia. It's very funny, because you don't see what's coming.

Trip Finale.

C. BAGNO: My favorite spot is called "Trip Finale." We did a series of baseball ads in 2001. The story was about two guys who went to every ballpark in the major
leagues one summer together in this beat-up, old Volkswagen microbus. We did five spots, in Cincinnati, Seattle, San Francisco, Baltimore, and one other market,
and they ran throughout the baseball season. Towards the end of the year, we decided to do—and this was after some debate, because it was expensive—a 60-
second version that was a montage of the entire trip. We launched it during the World Series and finished in August.

J. KING THOMAS: It was right before 9/11.

C. BAGNO: That was the thing. We finished it before 9/11. It was done in July or August. Then 9/11 happened, and all these marketers started running these
jingoistic, overtly American sorts of ads and we had the thing in the can and ran it. It ran probably only five times, but that spot gets me every time. Part of it was
that it was so American, without being overtly American. And I like the fact that it was so American, and yet done in advance of 9/11.

J. KOTTMANN: Also, it was also a series that was really about friendship. Along the way, they were spending for little things here and there. On the road trip, that's
what they needed. Very sweet.

L. SCOTT: How about you, Amy?

A. FULLER: I have an eleven-year-old son, and he looks like the eleven-year-old son in the very first Priceless spot. That first spot didn't run a lot. It had among
the lowest copy testing scores, yet it is a spot that will be forever remembered the way Dannon's dancing Russians are. Any time you do a yogurt focus group,
people talk about it. It ran in the 70s! For computers, it will always be IBM's campaign with Charlie Chaplin. That campaign was killed in mid-1980s. The "priceless"
line, "real conversation with eleven-year-old son," was such a dead-on insight. In fact, it still is.

Dannon Yogurt and IBM.

C. BAGNO: You know what else about that ad? It didn't run that much. I think it ran maybe 500 GRPs1 in total, which is not a lot of GRPs, but to this day people
still remember this ad. When we do focus groups, people are still talking about that ad that didn't run very much, so I think there is amazing insight there.

But the other thing about that spot is that the "priceless" moment was so unbelievably surprising. Surprise is what, I think, makes for some of the best "priceless"
moments, actually. Nobody saw it coming. I know when I saw it, I thought, "I want to work on that! That is cool." I think the surprise was part of what made people
remember it so much. And to this day, even people who know the campaign so well, when they hear that first purchase, they know that a "priceless" line is coming,
so now the trick is how to make that surprising.

J. KOTTMANN: The punch lines are always kept very genuine and real. You can do the strategy. You can even have "priceless," and then you can blow it by
having some lofty "priceless" line which is kind of wordy and doesn't really connect. When you keep it very simple and real, and it's just a conversation with your
son, that connects, and that comes up in groups when you show it to people.

C. BAGNO: Well, there's a lot of craft in it, too. That goes to the creative part of it. There are a lot of great nuances in that line that are very subtle. That's the
poetry of it. It's that line. It's that eleven-year-old son part of it—his age, the "real conversation" part of it.

An awful lot of lines get written but don't get produced because they actually overshoot. When you do huge "priceless," it doesn't feel quite the same way. You
need to back off.

L. SCOTT: You wouldn't go to "This is going to make you happy."

J. KING THOMAS: If you said, "happiness: priceless." Big broad thoughts don't work as well as specific ones. That's why the best spots happen when the writers
bring their own personal view of life to the task. The baseball series Craig spoke about was done by a great writer named Pete Jones, who has loved baseball
since he was a kid. And that was really one of his dreams, to travel from stadium to stadium. The ads are personal and intimate. Not like a corporate view of life.
They're meant to be very real.

J. KOTTMANN: Very genuine, very vivid. It's like great fiction writing.

A. FULLER: I also think that the memorability and success of that first spot shows what first mover advantage means in terms of creative ideas. MasterCard was
the first to capture that emotional ground so now the fact that eight years later, we see a competitor also searching for what their emotional high ground would be.
They will have a much, much harder job.

L. SCOTT: I'm going to now ask you to think of yourself as applied anthropologists. Having worked on all these articulations, all around the world, if you could distill
what people find priceless, yet buy things in order to achieve—what would they be?

J. KOTTMANN: If you look at these stories and distill them backwards, if you will, it probably comes back to times together and memories. Love, freedom. Very big
topics and things that people want, everybody wants. Universal ideas. The "What Matters" research, which literally went around to all these different countries, and
had very open kinds of dialogues with consumers, was designed to discover this. We actually had consumers bring in box-loads of pictures of their lives, of things
that mattered to them—experiences, moments, anything. We laid them all out on the table, and had a two- or three-hour discussion with each group. We had
people trading photos and talking. It kind of comes down to things you would expect—what really drives us all in those big categories. But I can't go to Joyce and
say, "Let's do that ad about love." She'd say, "Too big. Tell me more about it. Let's get down to this culture. What's the story? What's the moment? How old are
these people?" By the way, the other part of Priceless is what are we trying to move from a business standpoint? Where is the card being used or accepted? What
are people trying to buy? What's the emotional surround that the story should be about? So you're always working with an �bersubject, if you will. But you've got
to take it down to, very discretely, where you're working.

C. BAGNO: I think that is one of the greatest strengths of the campaign, that there is not just an emotional component, but a functional component as well. That's
one of the things people don't realize because the emotional part of the campaign is so powerful—I think they imagine that we are sitting around, trying to think of
special moments. We tend to start more with the functional—What do we want people to spend on? What do we want people to do? What do we want people to
understand about the business? —and then work back to the actual emotion. You see some campaigns out there that are just about the emotional. I love the fact
that this is about functionality first. If you go back to the very first Priceless ad, which was set at a baseball game, they picked a ballpark not so much because of
the emotion that can exist there, but because it was news that you could use your card at a ballpark at the time.

J. KOTTMANN: We tend to start with the location and the experience of where the card is being used for that thing, why the purchase is being bought, and then go
backwards in terms of what the story might be about, what the emotions might be about.

L. SCOTT: There's a concept in academic literature, terminal materialism, the idea that you buy something for the thing, and nothing more. It's my personal opinion
that terminal materialism does not exist. Having studied consumer behavior now for my whole adult life, I feel like people don't ever buy something just for itself;
they are always trying to achieve something else through the thing they're buying. Given the fact that you start with the function and a location, have you ever had
a situation where it made you think, "Okay, maybe there isn't a "priceless" component to this purchase?" Has that ever happened? In other words, have you ever
run up against terminal materialism?

J. KOTTMANN: If you look at Southeast Asia and China, right now at least, it's more about conspicuous consumption. So the question is does the campaign work
there? Well, we'll find ways to sell maybe jewels and other things, but make it about achievement. Maybe you got the Rolex because you had a great two years at
work and finished the project, not just because you want the Rolex. We have to and should do that, because that's the brand voice and that's the brand
personality, that's the brand idea that we're trying to work with.

J. KING THOMAS: Is cash therapy terminal materialism?

[Laughter]

What if someone is spending money, retail therapy?

L. SCOTT: Like when your heart is broken and you go shopping to feel better?

J. KING THOMAS: Yes. So what I'm saying is that I can't tell what terminal materialism would be.

L. SCOTT: I think when people attribute things to terminal materialism, usually they haven't thought it through enough. They are usually, in my opinion, just
interested in rendering a judgment on someone else (or on the culture they represent), but don't push themselves enough to say, "What is this person
accomplishing?" Are they healing a broken heart by buying ten pairs of earrings? Now, there definitely is an identifiable mental disorder called "compulsive
consumption," so I'm not saying buying never gets into a pathology, but I think even in that instance, it's not about the stuff. It's about something else. Fighting off
anxiety, for instance.

The Three Stooges.

C. BAGNO: Here's a kind of torture test example of how the format and creativity gets you around something that could seem like it's a dead end. We decided a
few years ago that we wanted to do a thing around doctors' co-pay acceptance. How do you do an ad about people getting sick and going to the doctor? Pete
Jones, the guy who did the baseball trip ads as well, came up with this idea of using The Three Stooges in kind of a montage format. One of the purchases in the
ad was "cracked cranium: $15 co-pay" and you see Larry hit Moe over the head with a wrench. I think the "priceless" line was, "no hurt feelings: priceless," and
you see the stooges sharing a group hug. With a little creativity, you can find a way to talk about almost anything.

Doctor's Office.

J. KING THOMAS: We did another ad about using your card at the doctor's office. It opened on a little boy with a lollipop in a doctor's waiting room. The purchase
was simply: "shots at the doctor." What was "priceless" was "your brother's turn." The boy smiled as his brother could be heard saying "ouch" from the other room.

I was thinking about when you were asking if there is one overriding theme behind purchases. It's probably not true in all cases, but human connection is probably
the biggest overall theme in our ads. Depicting human connection can be very clich�d territory. But we've found some interesting ways of making you feel
connected versus showing it. We've got two with Peyton Manning, the NFL quarterback. The spots have been very resonant with football fans. In both spots,
Peyton Manning acts like a fan. I don't know if you know football, but Peyton Manning is a very famous quarterback. In these commercials he does to fans what
they usually do to him. He tries to get their autographs; he tells them how great they are at their jobs (like bagging groceries); he cheers them on. He behaves like
a fan. And that connects him to his fans. The response has been tremendous. People love seeing this famous, handsome, popular quarterback acting like they do.
They feel connected to him. He became even more famous through the commercials.

Peyton Manning spots.

A. FULLER: He has appeared on Letterman talking about our spot. One of the lines from the first spot was "Cut that meat!" So now fans, in the stadium, are
chanting "Cut that meat!" That's a commercial with legs.

C. BAGNO: He actually went on Letterman and said that he used to go to games and people would yell, "Peyton, you stink," and now they yell, "Cut that meat!"

[Laughter]

J. KING THOMAS: It's all about human connection.

Cardboard Box.

C. BAGNO: One of these examples is a spot called, "Cardboard Box." There's only one person in the ad, and it's this little, adorable, 3-year-old child. You don't
see anything except this kid playing with this cardboard box and the purchases are about the most popular Christmas gifts in the world. When you see the kid play
with the cardboard box instead, and it says, "priceless." There's only one person in that ad, but I guarantee you that ad is about connection. Everybody sees some
kid in their life.

J. KOTTMANN: That ad is probably, arguably almost dead on top of the strategy. She didn't want the thing, she wanted the experience of what the thing was
about.

Mother Daughter.

L. SCOTT: One of my favorites is when a woman is taking her mother back to Ireland and they have a drink in the tavern where she met her father. I love it
because, in my case, it resonated beautifully with what I knew was actual historical experience.

J. KING THOMAS: I wrote that spot. My mom is an immigrant. Not from Ireland. She came from Morocco as a young adult, and she's never been back. That
commercial came out of that experience. We had an assignment to say that MasterCard is accepted globally, for travel. We didn't want the travel to be
extravagant, but meaningful. We tested several spots and this one was really, really resonant. I think it's about immigrants, but it's not just about immigrants. It's
about understanding where a parent is coming from. You know, that moment when you say, "Now I get why you've been doing this to me my whole life. I finally get
what led you to the place where you are." I think that's why people found the commercial moving.

C. BAGNO: The actual "priceless" line was, "Finally understanding where your mother was coming from." It's got this great layered meaning, which a lot of the
great "priceless" lines actually have.

L. SCOTT: Are there some layers that you didn't realize were there when you put it out there?

A. FULLER: That's an interesting question.

J. KING THOMAS: It's hard to know how magical they are going to be. You try to make every spot magical, but of course, some are more magical than others.
J. KOTTMANN: I guess I would answer that by saying you will be in some groups, and there are some spots that will even get more personal, like it was for you.
People had a very similar experience of people saying, "Oh my God, that's exactly what it's like, like the experience I had." And it's just that level or relevance
which is usually always very good but just gets taken down to the individual level.

C. BAGNO: What I think is interesting is that we're doing a launch of a thing called www.priceless.com, a MasterCard website. It's actually launching in the
Academy Awards this weekend. We've got a couple of ads that are blanks, basically. It's an ad, but the purchases aren't filled in: "Blank, $23. Blank and blank,
$44."

The image cannot be display ed. Your computer may not hav e enough memory to open the image, or the image may hav e been corrupted. Restart y our computer, and then open the file again. If the red x still appears, y ou may hav e to delete the image and then insert it again. The image cannot be display ed. Your computer may not hav e enough memory to open the image, or the image may hav e been corrupted. Restart y our computer, and then open the file again. If the red x still appears, y ou may hav e to delete the image and then insert it again.

Academy Awards spots.

L. SCOTT: And people fill that in?

C. BAGNO: Yes, they go to the website and fill it in. I just found, from the process of presenting and finishing those ads, that they're such a Rorschach test.
Everybody has a completely different reaction. They put themselves into the "priceless" moment, basically. I think that's what you see with a lot of the ads, though
to a much lesser extent because they are not as open-ended.

C. BAGNO: I'm always stunned by the ads that people like most, actually. You don't get the same answer a lot.

L. SCOTT: Have you ever done anything like this before, where you let them fill it in?

C. BAGNO: No.

L. SCOTT: They're going to love this.

C. BAGNO: I hope so.

L. SCOTT: The rhythm of this thing, the cadence, the knowing how it gets resolved, but not how it gets filled in. People have come to enjoy that situation.

C. BAGNO: That's where the idea came from.

J. KING THOMAS: It's comforting in a way. It's something like a habit.

L. SCOTT: It's a game where we kind of know what's going to turn out, but there's still tension between the new and the comfortable.

J. KOTTMANN: Not surprisingly, we get the question, "how long will this campaign go on?" And my first response is, "Are you tired of it?" No, actually. Priceless is
not one emotion. Some of the first spots, it's about experience and some of the spots are sweeter and heavier in emotion. But if you look at all the work, there's
tons of humor, there are times where it became glamorous and sexy. So it's a whole range of emotion too, which is important to keep it fresh.

L. SCOTT: I have a couple of passages from a classic reprint that is going to run in the same issue as this roundtable. I just wanted to try reading you a couple of
quick clips and see if any of it resonates with you, if it sounds right. The author, Michael Schudson, begins by surveying the anthropological literature on people's
interactions with goods, then proceeds to his essential argument, which is that we are very short on understanding materialism. And it has to do with the fact that
we judge people too quickly about what they need or don't need. He writes:

"Even in the poorest societies, even in the most primitive human world, human needs and desires are culturally constituted and socially defined. Human needs are
for inclusion, as well as for survival, for meaning as well as for existence…. What people require are the elements to live a social life, elements to be a person."2

A. FULLER: It's dead on.

J. KOTTMANN: We do need something more than just basics—food and shelter. For example, in certain mature markets, maybe you shouldn't judge an affluent
person because of what they buy. They may be buying things that are important within the context of their lives but that may look like a want or a luxury. But it has
meaning to them. It may look like conspicuous consumption, but in fact, it's perfectly validated for how they live and what they do.

C. BAGNO: To me, it's the strategy. People have to have meaning in their lives, and the reality is that they're willing to buy things sometimes to get to that
meaning. It's not necessarily about the stuff, but the stuff enables the experience. It's the conversation with the 11-year-old son.

A. FULLER: I think everything you buy has tremendous badge value. Not in a conspicuous sense, but has badge value to you personally. That's why there is
choice for almost everything you buy. There's choice, and there's a reason for that. There's a degree of individualism being applied to. Just think about buying a
potato peeler. If you buy a potato peeler at the grocery store, even at the grocery store, there is probably more than one. Do I want the utilitarian all-stainless, or do
I want the soft plastic handle? I have to decide which one is more "me"?
[Laughter]

J. KING THOMAS: I also think that spending is a little bit about moving forward. It's about making progress. Once you cover the basics, you move forward. You're
moving yourself, your family, your relationships, the meaning in your life. You have an opportunity to do that.

L. SCOTT: You started when you observed a shift in American values, and yet the campaign has played out around the world, even where the purchasing power is
very different. Do you think this has to do with the globalizing economy, or do you think you touched on something you are going to find in every human society?

J. KING THOMAS: I think we did touch on something pretty timeless and universal. Objects, beyond the basics, are never an end in themselves,

C. BAGNO: I think it's a universal truth. I think that's why the campaign is so powerful. It is a great articulation of a universal truth.

J. KING THOMAS: The purchases that we "sell" are a mix of needs and wants. We will do the $5 hardware store purchase at the same time that we might do a
dinner out. But every purchase has meaning. They are all loaded with meaning.

L. SCOTT: This next passage is talking about Adam Smith, and about the reason why everyone needs to have some kind of luxury, which could mean everything
from a colorful cloak to a piece of music.

"Adam Smith observes that no one, even the people in the lowest ranks of England, live only on necessaries. Even the poor enjoy luxuries… . The creditable
human being must have not only the things needed for a decent life, but something extra, something superfluous, sentimental, or luxurious. The human being, to
be human, must show that he or she is not just an animal or brute, not just biological, and must in some manner make that non-animal nature visible."3

J. KING THOMAS: That's absolutely true. I think subsistence is what animals do. I just read Elie Wiesel's book, Night, again. And I was thinking, even in that book,
the way they lived, they would make gestures that would make them human again. They needed to do or say or create things that were above and beyond
subsistence. Because subsistence is not really what makes you human.

L. SCOTT: It is amazing if you study people's behavior in concentration camps and in prisons. On the edge, this is how people make their humanity known.

J. KING THOMAS: And it's not just in going through the motions of staying alive where people reveal their humanity. It's the gestures that are "above and beyond"
that make us human. That's really what luxury is.

C. BAGNO: I'm not following that comment. That was the perfect example.

Notes

1
GRPs or gross rating points are the basic unit of measurement for the media schedules planned behind commercial campaigns. A single gross rating point (one
GRP) is one percent of a defined audience reached one time. So, for instance, if your audience was defined as "women 25-54," and you ran a commercial one
time that reached 5 percent of that audience, it would yield five GRPs.

2
Michael Schudson, Advertising: The Uneasy Persuasion (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 132.

3
Schudson, 133.

Copyright © 2006 by The Advertising Educational Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved.