If you tuned into NBC Universal’s coverage of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in the past few days, you may have noticed a new look and feel for its longtime paymentech sponsor, Visa.
The 63-year-old financial services company debuted a new global campaign, “Meet Visa,” in the days leading up to the Olympics that aims to reintroduce the storied brand to consumers and businesses who may only know a portion of its many capabilities. A suite of new spots from Visa’s new global creative agency Wieden & Kennedy, airing in globally during the Olympics and other channels including TV, social and out-of-home, showcases the many different use cases for Visa’s technology: from digital payroll and touchless merchant payments to crypto solutions and small business tools.
Though the launch timing coincides with the Olympics, which finally kicked off July 23 after a year’s worth of delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the “Meet Visa” campaign has been in the works for more than two years — culling insights from extensive research Visa conducted across more than 10,000 customers and business partners to understand its role and awareness in the broader payments ecosystem.
“It’s been a multi-year, company-wide effort to evolve our brand and support our business strategy to be broader and more expansive,” says Lynne Biggar, EVP-global chief marketing officer at Visa. “We’re introducing b-to-b payments in crypto, we’re partnering with fintechs and remittances and offering all sorts of new kinds of digital payment flows, so we thought it was a great time to really demonstrate to the world that Visa is so much — more than you might think we are.”
The events of the past 18 months helped influence Visa’s storytelling for the campaign, highlighting all the emerging use cases for the company’s technology that were accelerated during the pandemic — from helping gig workers get paid faster to working with governments in North and Latin America to help distribute stimulus disbursements to their citizens. “So much of what we did was right in the center of moving money in new ways and unlocking economic access, and the pandemic brought that into sharper focus,” Biggar says.
Another central part of “Meet Visa” is a refreshed logo design for the brand, featuring a new custom font and a different shade of blue designed by branding firm Mucho. The logo appears in campaign spots that began airing last week in 19 countries, eventually growing to over 40 countries in the coming months. “It’s a very digital way of expressing the Visa brand with a custom font, a new color for our brand logo, and an evolved brand symbol,” Biggay says. “By the end of the year, all of those things will be live across all of the 200 markets Visa operates in. It’s a pretty broad and ambitious set of activities.”
Brand Innovators caught up with Biggar from Visa’s offices in New York to learn more about the insights behind the new campaign, how she’s sponsoring an Olympics unlike any other and why she thinks purpose-driven marketing will be one of the lasting impacts coming out of the pandemic. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Brand Innovators: How did the COVID-19 pandemic initially impact your business in spring 2020, and what are some innovations or pivots you put in place to help your customers adapt to the new market conditions?
Lynne Biggar: The pandemic impacted so many things for so many people. As it related to Visa, so much of commerce shifted online and/or became touchless, which are two big shifts we have not seen go back and don’t expect to go back. Probably a decade’s worth of speed-up happened in 18 months, more or less, and we were there to really meet the moment, which has been exciting to be a part of, and really kind of an honor to lead the team through.
At the very beginning of the pandemic, obviously the Olympics were postponed, and we had been planning for over two years how we would support a group of athletes we call Team Visa. This year’s group happens to be our largest, most diverse group we’ve had yet, and it’s 100 strong — including three employees of ours, and athletes from over 55 countries who compete in 28 sports. So when the pandemic hit, we deployed them to help get some really basic messages out.
I think we forget sometimes, living in the U.S., that when the pandemic began, there were many markets around the world where ecommerce and the simplicity of just buying groceries online was not there. We at Visa needed to help educate consumers that it’s safe to transact online, here’s how you transact online, here’s why you can trust Visa to make sure that transaction is secure. So we did a whole body of work around small business support — not only encouraging consumers to shop in their neighborhood and support their small businesses, but also working with small businesses to help them figure out how to market digitally and stand up ecommerce sites.
Going into the pandemic, something like 50% of all small businesses did not have an ability to transact commerce online. So we dove right in and across many markets, we started to thread the needle and connect these buyers and sellers in ways that were beneficial to both of them. We also visited 300,000 small businesses in 15 countries to help them get touchless payment capabilities so their customers would want to visit them. And then we’ve done a lot of great work in terms of enabling 50 million small businesses to be digitally enabled, and we’re already well on our way on that. Our foundation has provided $200 million in support for small and micro enterprise, and I’m really proud of everything we did.
What types of stories were you looking to tell in this new series of spots for the “Meet Visa” campaign that just debuted?
We wanted to show the power of Visa as a network that works for everyone — it lies in our diversity, and diversity is identified in the variety of situations. It’s our globality that enables us to take advantage of those situations, the scale that helps unlock access in new ways, and the types of partnerships that we have across such a wide variety of small, medium and large partnerships and businesses. That’s why the type of vignettes that you see are real people doing real things in real places that really bring the power of the network to life.
One example is demonstrating how we support getting gig workers paid faster. Another example is how, through a capability called Tap To Phone, we can enable a small business owner to be paid and to accept digital payments just with a phone they don’t need a terminal or connectivity or a bunch of complex equipment if a situation doesn’t enable that. Another example is about ecommerce and how that’s such a 360 between buyers and sellers. All of the work is meant to demonstrate in a dynamic way the diversity and breadth of individuals and how businesses can take advantage of our network.
What inspired you to update the brand’s logo as part of the new campaign?
We felt that, given that our brand is so forward-looking and innovative and involved with so much great work that helps enable individuals, business and economies, that there was a great opportunity to imbue our visual identity with that energy. So what you’ll see is a new custom font that’s really exciting and energetic, we’ve updated the color of our blue Visa logo to pop a little bit more — it’s a little more dynamic. And our color palette, which you’ve always known as blue and gold surrounding the Visa logo, we’ve evolved that to be a powerful brand symbol on its own which is really designed to express the purpose behind our company and our brand and really reinforce the themes of equality, acceptance and inclusion and access. You’ll see that symbol standing on its own in ways you won’t have seen before.
The “Meet Visa” campaign will air during the Olympics, where Visa is returning as a sponsor. What can we expect of your activations this year, knowing this will be an Olympics unlike any other in terms of on-site presence?
Visa is the official paymentech partner for the Olympics, which we’ve been a proud sponsor of for over 30 years. And as such, we not only advertise during the Olympics in ways that you might have seen us do, but we have an operational component that involves ensuring that the venues for the event and the gift shops accept Visa. Obviously this year has been a very evolving situation, so to the extent that those operational requirements are needed, our local teams on site will be there to make them happen.
We don’t have any senior executives going to the Olympics this year for obvious reasons. Obviously, our hospitality programs are not running because of the spectator-less games, but very fortunately one of the major things we do is supporting the athletes. Our hearts are really with all these athletes who’ve gone through all these complexities to be able to compete this year and hang on for another year.
One of the first things we did a year ago in March was tell all our Team Visa athletes that we would support them for another year, no questions asked. If they wanted to compete, we were here to support them and virtually every one of them is continuing to compete. So around the world, across all the 50+ countries they represent, we’ll be cheering them on to compete safely and successfully. You can already see some work with them. I saw a great spot from our Canada team supporting a Canadian female footballer, and you’ll see that paired with our new visual identity.
We are also partnering with Bank of America on some film work with Simone Biles talking about tapping to pay, which you might have seen in the ad breaks for some of the Olympic trials earlier this month. We also have some work we’ve done with our partner Wells Fargo supporting them on launching a new card with a new value proposition with two of our Visa athletes Katie Ledecky and paralympics cyclist Oksana Masters. Our Team Visa athlete family is woven throughout all our work.
What are some efforts you’ve introduced with Visa to advance diversity & inclusion and help close the wealth gap for underrepresented communities this past year?
As a brand that is focused on acceptance, this is something that we’ve spent a lot of time on. Last July, we announced our commitment to developing the next generation of Black leaders through the Visa Black Scholars and Jobs program, and those individuals have been selected. We also have a partnership with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and dedicated a $10 million scholarship program over five years to high school students, where if they graduate they’ll come work at Visa.
We also spend a lot of time ensuring consumers have access to financial tools that help them be smart about living their lives and make smart economic decisions. One example of that is we’ve provided 500 million underbanked and underserved people access to digital payment accounts. That has been completed, but there’s still plenty of work to do for users. We’ve partnered with a crypto solutions provider to help serve the underbanked in emerging markets, and last year we did a lot of work supporting Black women owned small businesses, providing $1 million worth of grants, and that work is extending outside the U.S. So those are just a couple examples of all the things we’re doing to provide solutions.
Contactless payment was already an emerging trend before COVID, but how have you seen that activity speed up across the globe?
I will tell you there’s been a dramatic increase in contactless credentials. You might or might not know this, but the percentage of physical transactions that are contactless is very high in most places except for the U.S. In the U.S., it more than doubled, so there’s just this continuing movement toward secure, touch-free solutions that I don’t think will change. The use of digital payment forms over cash is going to continue with many of our partners.
For example, in the U.S. in NFL stadiums we’ve been working with them to welcome fans back cash free. There’s just an increasing number of ways that we can continue to support bringing consumers into the digital economy through a lot of innovation that got sped up during the pandemic.
What new consumer behavior trends did you see emerge this past year that you think will be here to stay as we embrace more hybrid and virtual experiences?
I think one of the things that is a general trend and won’t be terribly surprising is the ongoing focus of consumers and businesses on ensuring that companies they do business with align with their values. There’s a real shift to making decisions about purchasing and staying local based on these values. Half of consumers say they’ll walk away from brands when they’re disappointed by their actions, and 5% say they’re disappointed by a brand’s involvement in societal issues that are important to them.
In many cases, individuals within businesses are making decisions based on emotional connection and alignment of values across companies than they are on the commercials of the business. As we’ve all navigated our way through this really challenging time and are coming back to our values as humans, I think this is a wonderful thing and I hope it continues. It certainly puts an emphasis on ensuring we’re true to who we are.
Andrew Hampp is an entertainment marketing consultant for Brand Innovators and the founder of consultancy 1803 LLC, based in Berkeley, California.
