Magazine: Winning cards

Mastercard was the sponsor of the prize game and the cooking contest. We asked marketing manager Péter Mondovics about the cooperation.

  How did Mastercard end up ‘on the dinner table’?

Péter Mondovics
marketing manager
Mastercard

–Mastercard is not a card issuer but a payment technology company, basically what we do is connect retailers with customers. The B2B segment – where METRO belongs too – is especially important for Mastercard, and here card payment is slowly but steadily taking over. We are happy to do promotion campaigns with partners, popularising card payment. METRO’s initiative fitted into this picture very well.

  Why did you choose a cooking-themed promotion?

– Experience is in the centre of our communication strategy and cooking together with others is definitely a fun thing to do. METRO is the perfect choice to do anything cooking-related. 13 stores participated in the campaign and it was a great success. It is important for us to see that shoppers associate the benefits of card payment not only with Mastercard, but the given retailer too: this is a win-win situation for both parties.

What synergies does your cooperation with METRO create?

– The majority of the campaign’s promotional part was running on digital platforms – this is in perfect harmony with how we think about the world. Our cooperation with partners works best where partners are receptive to innovations, and make efforts to offer customers real experience. We actually reward this type of behaviour with the Retailer of the Year award. What is more, let’s not forget that card use makes it easier to manage loyalty programmes.

How can you help partners in this field?

– This year we launched our loyalty programme that is tied to bank card use; it is available for a large number of retailer partners. Shoppers collect points with their card payments, which they can convert into offers – often experiences – at the retailers.

We started off from gastronomy; which is your favourite cuisine or restaurant type?

– I love fine dining but my wife – who is actually a culinary blogger – and I do like Indian and Italian cuisine too.