Mastercard Brand Center
Brand management: Managing the assets of a global brand
Look at the window in store virtually anywhere in the world, and you’re likely to see the Mastercard acceptance sticker. Open a wallet and there’s the Mastercard card. See an ad on TV, or a logo on a digital shopping site and there’s the familiar Mastercard logo. Managing the visual and verbal assets of the Mastercard brand on a global scale is a huge responsibility. And it’s one we know well through our work on Mastercard’s Brand Center.
Our work with Mastercard spans strategy to execution. Over the years, we have helped refine the organization’s brand architecture, branded important products such as Mastercard® PayPass™ and MasterPass™, and developed innovative brand management tools to give employees, issuers and merchants global access to one of the organization’s most valuable assets—its brands.
Mastercard asked us to enhance the content and usability of their existing Brand Center so that users can quickly and easily find and download brand-related information — including logo artwork, guidelines, templates and FAQs. The web-based Brand Center had to be functional and practical for users of all technical levels, and serve as a one-stop shop for different user groups: employees, merchants, issuers and vendors. Updates would have to be fast and easy to ensure accurate information is always readily available.
Before beginning any development work, we collaborated with Mastercard to spell out clear goals and objectives for the website. This enabled us to better organize content and determine site functionality, architecture and navigation. We simplified and rewrote online (and offline) guidelines and redesigned screens to improve information clarity and ease-of-use. Downloader tools were designed to incorporate both “expert” and “guided” functionality, giving first-time users more guidance and instruction.
The comprehensive, fully-functional online management tool was launched with great success worldwide, demonstrating the importance of the Mastercard family of brands through consistent use and application. Day-to-day requests for logo artwork, general brand questions and information, have dramatically decreased and users find what they need online. The success prompted Mastercard Japan, Mastercard Germany, Mastercard Brazil, and Mastercard LAC to develop regional Brand Centers in their local language.
