Visa gets poetic in new campaign for Infinite card

Online videos feature haikus, hand-built models and Morgan Freeman

Visa’s new campaign

Whimsical, Morgan Freeman

Online video

Visa Canada is getting poetic in a new campaign promoting its Visa Infinite card, a premium credit card catering to $100,000-plus households.

The financial services company has created a series of short-form videos featuring long-time spokesman Morgan Freeman reading haikus that speak to experiences made possible by the Infinite card.

Created by BBDO Toronto, “The Infinite list in Haiku” campaign sets experiences such as surf lessons in Tofino or storm watching on Vancouver Island to poetry. The words are brought to life by actual working models (created by Vancouver creative studio Giant Ant) representing the experience.

“We love the fact that a haiku is a short-form way of telling an important story, and there’s a real artfulness and sophistication to it that we thought was right for the campaign,” said Helena Tigert, Visa’s head of consumer credit marketing. “We wanted to bring these experiences to life beyond the way we’ve done it to date.”

Nancy Crimi-Lamanna, vice-president, associate create director for BBDO, said the hand-built, hand-painted – and hand-powered – models bring a “whimsical and magical” element to the videos that aligns with their poetic approach.

“It really meshed with the concept of haiku,” she said. “And then having a master storyteller like Morgan, with these really rich sets, really brought them to life in a great way.”

The campaign is intended to distinguish Visa in a crowded marketing category said Tigert. “We decided we didn’t want to go down the usual path – we wanted to take an innovative, fresh approach to bringing these experiences to life. When we looked at the new concept, it just fit perfectly.

“It seemed like a fresh, unique approach to bringing these stories to life.”

Visa introduced the “Infinite List” of experiences made possible by the Infinite card earlier this year, with a double-page spread in The Globe and Mail. The company has also partnered with House & Home magazine, with founder Lynda Reeves creating her own “Infinite List” of experiences in pull-page ads appearing in recent issues. The campaign, with media from OMD, also uses radio and out-of-home.

The new videos are housed on YouTube, but are also appearing as autoplay ads on Facebook and on Twitter. They are also referenced on Visa’s Instagram page.

Tigert said the campaign is intended to showcase Visa Infinite’s benefits – such as a 24/7 complimentary concierge and exclusive dining events – beyond standard features like travel miles and insurance.

“We wanted to speak to the heart, focusing on experiences and bringing them to life to inspire cardholders to lean into life,” she said. “We want to talk about the product in a fresh, breakthrough way by focusing on experiences and the stories our cardholders tell us about all the time.”

Visa said it has seen a 60% increase in traffic to VisaInfinite.ca since the campaign began, and a 71% increase in website profile creation. There have also been 200,000 organic Google searches for “Infinite List,” more than double the number of organic searches the company received for a previous campaign.

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Russ Horodelski

Love BBDO; Love the Concept, Love VISA, use it all the time; Love Morgan Freeman, but he’s an American. I’m real tired of Americans taking our good ol; Canadian jobs., unless I’m missing something and this is a world wide campaign If it is, why .ca. I just don’t get it. AND, we have multi-national agencies working on Canadian Government business, using U.S. offices; U.S. employees. (See:PHD/Travel Alberta) There are a thousand home grown Canadian agencies with a wealth of U.S. experience that could do the same job. Can you imagine the crap that would hit the fan if a Marketing Headline read: “BYU Agency of Toronto Awarded Tourism California Biz.” And you thought the riot in Ferguson was violent.

Monday, March 16 @ 2:39 pm |

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