Mumbai: To celebrate the festive season and uplift the spirit of masses, Mastercard in collaboration with Citi launched a campaign ‘Celebration To Banta Hai’ in association with Shankar Mahadevan, Rajkumar Rao and Patralekha. The campaign encapsulated the love India has for festivals and encouraged people to celebrate the festivities this year with all the safety precautions. Mastercard and Citi observed a drastic change in consumer behavior driven by considerations of availability, convenience, and safety. The brand duo wanted to break the clutter in the hectic festive marketing environment through this campaign to connect with cardholders. The campaign showcased the multiple brand offers that bank’s customer could avail on Citi cards.
As part of the campaign, Shankar Mahadevan had composed a song imbibing the Mastercard sonic branding guidelines. It was a music video conducted over a video conference call featuring Rajkumar Rao and Patralekha. A video conference call commences with office colleagues talking about how they miss Diwali in office. Patralekha starts the music over the call, which then showcases a music video, written and composed by Shankar Mahadevan. Each office colleague on the call showcased how they celebrated Diwali at their own homes this season.
With this campaign, Mastercard and Citi aimed to reach out stakeholders across the spectrum. Hence, in addition to promoting this video on social media and through commercial telecast, the song was also uploaded on music streaming platforms to amplify the reach. The content was also used for internal engagement with Citi employees through emailers, internal contest and caller tunes for employees.
“This year, the festive season was unique for all of us. We gave our customers the opportunity to make the most of what they may have missed out on, and built optimism and hope, while driving engagement with their favourite Citi cards” said Arjun Chowdhry, Head of Credit Cards, Payments and Unsecured Lending, Citi India.
“This festive season gave us the opportunity to get back some hope, some fun, and some moments to appreciate ourselves and our loved ones. The campaign was live across multiple platforms with some unique immersive experiences and it was exciting to bring this unique song exclusively for the festive season to our clients.” said Arnika Dixit – Head – Digital Sales & Marketing, Data & Client Experience, Citi India.
Commenting on the launch of the campaign, Manasi Narasimhan, Vice President, Marketing & Communications, South Asia, Mastercard said, “The ongoing pandemic has affected millions of lives, yet it has failed to shake the spirits of humanity. ‘Celebration to Banta Hai’ focused on the excitement for the festive season despite the challenges that the nation and the world has seen since the outbreak of Covid-19. Even though this year there have been some restrictions due to Covid-19 protocol around festive celebrations, every small opportunity is worth celebrating. This campaign is aimed to boost the confidence of people and encourage them and be part of their celebration.”
Since the company first unveiled its sonic identity in February 2019, Mastercard has been at the forefront of sonic branding. The company believes that effective sonic branding can help in differentiation, image, identity and emotional connectivity. Taking the advertising jingle to the next level, Mastercard’s sonic brand reaches every touchpoint, from television commercials to digital marketing to point-of-sale transaction sounds. The melody used for an audio branding should be pleasant, memorable, and neutral Keeping these insights in mind, Mastercard has been working tirelessly to collaborate and create audio branding material in different forms.
