MasterCard to refocus on globalisation

By Richard Braddell

MELBOURNE - The mountain bike fad, cellphones and body-piercing are vivid examples of tribalism on a global scale.

But accelerating globalisation and the customer expectations it is promoting are trends that the banking industry is only just getting to grips with, says Dr Joseph Plummer, a New York-based brand specialist with advertising agency McCann-Erickson Worldwide.

The agency is behind the MasterCard advertising on New Zealand television and around the world that hammers the theme there are some things money cannot buy ... for everything else you need MasterCard.

Self-proclaimed as the "oracle of the obvious," Dr Plummer identifies two key assets as the financial services industry adapts: the brand - guard it carefully - and customers, who have to be nurtured.

The brand represents trust and reliability, he says, and it can humanise a firm in a world where customers find globalism exciting but also worry that it will demonise them.

Friendly, funky brand names such as Yahoo and Excite overcome those concerns while they spearhead new products.

Dr Plummer says global businesses fall into one of three "brand architectures" - the holding company model adopted by the likes of General Motors, Nestle and Unilever; the power parent with interconnection brand names typified by Sony, Microsoft and McDonald's; and the megabrand model followed by Heinz and Levi's.

MasterCard obviously fits into the second category, with three or four sub-brands using the same two circles decal format as the parent.

Nevertheless, the MasterCard brand is changing, driven by a restructuring of the company aimed at taking it out of a one-size-fits-all mindset into one of being customer focused.

As part of that process, a 32-member board, or "conference" as global chief executive Robert Selander calls it, was trimmed back to 17, much the same size as the subordinate executive committee it rendered redundant.

In addition to improved control, decisions can be made much faster, helping to drive the 13 per cent growth in payments business in the second quarter of this year over the same period last year.

The refocusing has also helped in the launch of a product such as the hugely successful GlobalPlus card in New Zealand, which, in Mr Selander's words, "has put MasterCard back on the map" in this country.

The co-branding of loyalty air points with Air New Zealand and the Bank of New Zealand has also strengthened MasterCard's position with the BNZ, which has tended to promote rival Visa.

MasterCard is now looking for a well-targeted loyalty alliance in Australia where a Telstra-Visa-Qantas alliance has stolen a march.

But while MasterCard's global branding includes television advertising that can be screened in any country, it is ironic that it is also contemplating lower brand prominence on its cards, perhaps even allowing its logo to be moved on to the back so an issuing partner will be free to make its own pitch on the face side.

But one place where the MasterCard decal may become more prominent is on the Internet where trust in its brand may be the only independent evidence of a merchant's standing.

* Richard Braddell travelled to Melbourne courtesy of MasterCard International.