Nine passes left to attend the Digiday Publishing Summit

Finance brands are pushing money-can’t-buy customer journeys in an effort to keep customers engaged.
Take Mastercard’s “Priceless Surprises” lottery, for example. Customers who get their name drawn could be sent to a dinner at a fancy restaurant, on a vacation to their favorite city, or even have Justin Timberlake show up at their doorstep. It’s part of a larger trend in financial marketing to let the customer “feel” the experience of the brand in a way that’s not connected to a particular product or service.
“Storytelling is dead,” said Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer for Mastercard, speaking at Advertising Week New York on Tuesday. “You need to engage with consumers in a way that’s completely different; you need to connect with them as people, understanding what matters in their lives.”
So, rather than craft a story for the customer, brands now want to be part of that story, being there for life experiences that matter most to them. The thinking is the result of a change in the marketing strategies from storytelling around products to enmeshing the brand with the customer’s life.
Read the full story on tearsheet.co
Featured image of Chase-sponsored concert at the Club Bar & Grill in Madison Square Garden, courtesy Chase
More in Marketing

In Graphic Detail: AI adoption increases, but U.S. consumers are still wary
Digiday has charted the rise of generative AI, big tech’s investment into AI as well as agencies’ top use cases and consumer sentiment.

Confessions: How an indie agency’s over-reliance on AI drove it out of business
One creative exec’s cautionary tale of a founder obsessed with silver bullets — and an agency that ultimately went out of business because of it.

Why Ace Hardware believes its RMN can be a late-stage competitor — without ‘homegrowing anything’
Ace Hardware is the latest to chase retail media dollars with the launch of RedVest Media, betting that its hyper-local footprint can carve out a slice of the ad pie—even as a latecomer.