Visa
I worked on Visa from the pitch that won the business until the account left the agency twenty years later. Over that time Visa’s market share expanded from 43.8 percent to 52 percent and agency billings went from $20 million to $340 million. Along the way our group collected many of the industry’s most prestigious awards, including EFFIEs, Clios, and Cannes Lions.
I worked on a few travelogue spots in the classic “It’s Everywhere You Want to Be” campaign, but the majority were for the Visa Check Card (they’re called debit cards now). The overarching strategy was the card’s speed, convenience, and acceptance over checks. About 32 million Americans carried a Visa Check Card when it was introduced in 1995; ten years later that number was 167 million. The campaign won two Effies.
Here are some of the spots I co-created that were successful metrically and creatively.
Visa Check Card | “Sheen”
Checks are a hassle for merchants and customers. Days might pass before a merchant is alerted that a check has bounced or is fraudulent. Not only will he lose money on a service or product, but he is also hit with a fee from the bank. So to protect themselves, they ask for forms of I.D. and even call the bank.
We thought about the time lost while a storekeeper vetted your check, and our first notion was to show a customer aging while the clerk ran various credit checks. We felt that using make-up or special effects would be obvious and unimaginative. Then we hit on the universal truth that children often turn into their parents. To carry the concept, it was necessary to use celebrity pairs. We looked into Michael and Kirk Douglas; Jerry and Ben Stiller; and Joan and Melissa Rivers. They were each discounted for various reasons, but we got the right combination with Charlie and Martin Sheen
This spot could have been on the Super Bowl, but Visa couldn’t wait to release it. TIME magazine called it, “The commercial equivalent of nothing but net.” It got a lot of press, won multiple awards, and was nominated for an Emmy.
Visa Check Card Zero Liability | “Rooftop”
The Visa Check Card was the first to introduced Zero Liability: you’re not liable for unauthorized purchases made with lost or stolen cards, and the money is restored to your bank account regardless of your balance.
This made us think about really wealthy cardholders with a lot to protect. After toying with a few grossly overpaid athletes, we settled on Central Casting’s “billionaire,” Donald J. Trump. Since no celebrity got off easy in a Visa commercial, we wanted Trump to learn the hard way about the card’s security features. (This spot was officially called “Rooftop,” but internally we called it “Trumpster.”)
Trump later called this his favorite commercial and added, “the ability to laugh at myself keeps my perspective intact and makes people realize that I’m a complex person, concerned about more than just ambition.” LOL.
Saturday Night Live referenced the spot in a skit about Trump filming a cheesy Halloween promo for The Apprentice. Here’s an excerpt:
Visa Check Card | “Nigel”
Because some merchants won’t even take checks, we thought about someone left in a predicament because they couldn’t pay for something essential. We didn’t want to start with the failed purchase, but save it for the reveal. This led to a “What’s going on” execution as a man stands still while passersby react and fail to distract him.
By the way, this was not filmed in London, but in the shadow of another “palace,” Aaron Spelling’s 123 room mansion in Holmby Hills.
The spot ranked in the Top 5 in industry polls, and 15th on USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter.
Visa Check Card | “Yao”
Seven-foot-five Yao Ming was something of a mystery when he was picked first by the Houston Rocket in the NBA draft. This spot helped introduce him to U.S. audiences in a humorous way.
Since I am an Abbott and Costello aficionado, I’m happy we captured the confusion and rapid-fire rhythm of “Who’s On First?” (The Pizza Hut “Deion and Jerry” spot also feels like a straight man-comic exchange.)
For the tag we considered using cellist Yo-Yo Ma, but decided that the beloved Yogi Berra was a much better, funnier payoff.
The spot ran on the Super Bowl and placed 16th on USA Today’s Ad Meter but much higher in industry polls. Yao was haunted by this spot wherever he played. Fans called out “Yo! Yao!” (People called him Yao in America but he had always been called Ming in China.) He is the first and only player from the People’s Republic of China to be inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame.
Visa NFL | “Music”
This assignment combined Visa’s Check Card strategy with its NFL sponsorship. The right music can make all the difference – in sports and film.
We went through many, many songs to find the right one, which had to be the polar opposite of a stadium anthem. We listened to classical music, children’s songs, and Johnny Mathis before landing on this one. It paid off, because this spot won an award for…Best Use of Music.
Visa Olympics | “Synchronized Commercialism”
A celebrity in a Visa spot is always self-deprecating. Here, Visa is no exception as we poked fun at “official Olympic sponsorship.”