One key part of Visa’s content marketing strategy in Asia Pacific is to inform key influencers about Visa products and programs and seed Visa stories in media outlets. It’s an alternative approach to PR that is working very well, and at the core is a commitment to making journalist-quality content for the brand.
C2V began working with Visa on an editorial calendar and digital platform for the brand’s newsroom, creating a new skin for a Tumblr to publish the content. We populated the site with engaging editorial videos about the opinions of Visa merchants and customers. Rather than talking about the brand itself Click2View and Visa worked together to create a film outlining the benefits of electronic payments in stores, restaurants and bars from both a vendor and customer perspective. A journalist carried out the research and interviews to ensure that the brand got right story.
Whilst this is a tried and true method, and relatively straightforward, it has not been common practice at Visa so we were breaking new ground. The resulting piece was full of testimonials that were deeply authentic and engaging. The product teams were amazed how easily we were able to capture such compelling and relevant content.
One key benefit of this approach is that it allowed us to create large amounts of content relatively quickly and on budget.
We interviewed merchants in Singapore, Bangkok and Jakarta to create a story about the impact of electronic payments on SMEs within these markets. The film above collated all the responses and then we were able to re-cut the footage into individual films for each merchant.
In the end we were able to present Visa with nine individual merchant films and one anthology – creating a stream of newsworthy testimonial content that will be released over a couple of months.
“The Visa Asia Pacific Newsroom allows us to create stories that connect with a range of influencers in the way they want via video, text, images and other media such as slideshows and infographics. It allows us to tell a bigger story that transcends technology and encompasses merchant benefits, the economics of electronic payments and financial inclusion all of which are enabled by Visa. Working with Click2View allows us to accomplish this feat with efficiency, creativity and integrity. Their in-house ‘storytellers’ and production facilities enable us to act quickly to create journalist-quality content across the region, which keeps our social newsroom riveting and relevant.”
Kris LeBoutillier, Digital Content Director, Asia Pacific, Visa
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Subsequently we have followed this up with more content projects showcasing the many different aspects of Visa’s products and programs. To distribute this content we worked with the recommendation engine Outbrain who are able to seed the content within digital news platforms around the region and globally.
The trial campaign resulted in a significant boost in traffic for the Visa news site. Take a look at the Visa AsiaPacific Newsroom here.