After "Priceless," MasterCard Goes On a Trip With Yahoo
MasterCard takes its next foray into the realm of consumer-generated content by hooking up with Yahoo! Travel as the online giant unveils its Trip Planner feature this week.
The travel resource, which spent nine months in beta testing, enables users to plan their trip and create a customized, printable travel guide that they can take for their journey.
Yahoo! has amassed 20,000 trip plans submitted by travellers from around the world (Afghanistan is the only country lacking a trip journal), which users can access through searching by destination, trip experience or author profile. Travellers also can document their trips with tools that allow them to add photos and an interactive map with ratings and reviews.
It’s not the first time this year that MasterCard has gone directly to the customer for content. In May, the Purchase, N.Y.-based company’s www.priceless.com received 100,000 submissions from consumers who entered a copywriting contest by filling in the blanks accompanying images from two 30-second spots titled "Typewriter" and "Sailboat."
Fifteen finalists will be judged next month and the winning entry will be made into a commercial during the third quarter.
Now MasterCard will try to generate credit card transactions by using Yahoo! Travel as a banner to flag its "Win 500 Flights Sweepstakes."
Cardholders get entries with every MasterCard purchase though July 31 for a chance to win 500 round trip air travel tickets to anywhere in the world. TV, print, online, via McCann-Erickson, New York, and ATM signage also support that effort.
Additionally, MasterCard is offering one pair of plane tickets every day to consumers who use Yahoo! Trip Planner through the summer. The offer will be touted on both parties’ Web sites along with heavy rotation across the Yahoo! network of banner ads urging consumers to try Trip Planner with messages like "With 2 free plane tickets, where would you go?"
Yahoo! Travel also will take over a billboard in New York's Times Square starting July 15 and integrate Trip Planner with Flickr, Yahoo!'s digital photo sharing Web site by August. Creative is handled by OgilvyOne, New York as well as in-house.
Among the objectives for adding the Trip Planner tool is to prove that a social media with user-generated content can be monetized, said Scott Jampol, Yahoo! Travel's director of marketing. For MasterCard, the partnership helps it tap an affluent and travel heavy audience through an alternative medium.
"We needed to continue the momentum and continue the path into consumer generated content," said Cheryl Guerin, MasterCard's vp-promotions/interactive. "We've had consumers participate in creating the MasterCard priceless experience but now we have to have functionality with that in order to drive our business."
