It’s not every day that nature decides to support a brand, but on December 26, 2019, the Sun and the Moon teamed for a solar eclipse that occurs once every five generations–and that also painted the Mastercard logo in the sky.
The eclipse was visible in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Oman, across southern India and Sri Lanka, to Indonesia and Malaysia.
This once in a lifetime eclipse mirrored the Mastercard logo at two particular points, so Mastercard decided to celebrate by giving its customers the sale of the century to coincide with the sight of the century.
The event, “Astronomical Sales” from FP7 Dubai and McCann Worldgroup, featured prices on Mastercard’s partner website that diminished with the sun. In other words, as the amount of the sun visible declined, so did the prices on the website. When the eclipse reached 97%, Mastercard holders received a 97% discount on an array of products. But this event lasted only for the brief window of almost-total eclipse. Once the sun started revealing itself again, the prices increased, until the eclipse, and the sale, ended.
Since the eclipse painted the Mastercard logo in the sky at two different times, Mastercard is rewarding two lucky shoppers with priceless experiential prizes–but only if they managed to pay for their purchases at one of the two exact moments in which the sun and moon intersected to form the Mastercard logo. The campaign slogan is: “A priceless alignment of the stars.”
To create excitement in the region about the sale, Mastercard secured some of the busiest out of home advertising spaces in the UAE, as well as an array of digital and print creative in the region. This ScreenWork entry is the campaign movie.
