Mastercard Dir of Social Media & Digital Content Gregg Weiss (@Mastercard) is well versed in the social media universe, having helped develop New York Life’s social media strategy, and before that building AmEx' online profile. Weiss just celebrated his five-year anniversary with Mastercard, and he said, “We as a brand have changed our approach and it’s just been amazing being at the center of that in social. Going back to when I came here, it was like, ‘How do we find a way to force social into what we’re doing?’ Now everything we do we think so much about the consumer and we think so much about how the brand can affect sentiments and how it can add value.”
How social media has evolved: It was a win to be able to use stock photos as imagery in social just a handful of years ago to how we’ve evolved out content production here, how we’re not saying, “Find a stock photo and we’ll throw it up there on Twitter.” Now it’s how do we get a social-first content approach, knowing that consumer behavior has evolved and consumer attention has evolved considerably where the pressure is on even more to convey a message and create an opportunity for a positive interaction with the consumer.
Mastercard's social media philosophy: Our brand positioning is so strong and that in many ways I feel like it’s made for social. Talk about being able to leverage something spectacular in social. That’s our philosophy. How do we connect people to “Priceless Possibilities?” And I would add something to it, specifically for social, and celebrate that. Celebrate the experiences people are having, celebrate experiences people are having that may not even be related to us, but that we can authentically join the conversation on because the culture of “Priceless” is embedded in pop culture and we have the opportunity to celebrate those moments people are having.
Effort put into sports-related social media campaigns: Something that we take very seriously is making sure that content that we’re putting out in social media and potentially even promoting to people in their feeds is rooted in insight and is rooted in some sort of a human truth or something we feel can be added to the conversation, a lot of planning upfront to pressure-test around an idea to make sure that it’s really going to resonate. We really do want to make sure we’re adding value each and every time we put something out and it’s not self-serving.
Making a campaign successful: Every campaign and every piece of content within a campaign has a different objective, so it’s not a one-size-fits-all. We have different KPIs for different objectives. Mastercard exists for business reasons and we have business we’re trying to drive, but at the same time I don’t think anyone has really jumped off their sofa because they saw a tweet from Mastercard and rushed to the mall and said, ‘Oh my God, I got to use that thing right now at two in the morning.’ That’s just not the way life works so what we try to do is measured in an exposed, rather than controlled, population when we have the opportunity to. Each platform serves a unique role so we’re certainly not looking to find which one is best and abandon all else.
Who does social media well: I’m not saying we should be like Denny’s or Wendy’s or Charmin, but all three of those, they are hysterical and I love the authentic rawness of their content and their tone and humor that they put into their product and their experience, it makes me chuckle when I am looking through what they’re doing. MLB just does such a good job of finding those moments and short video clips that really bring you in and show you the highlights and I just love the content that MLB puts out.
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