Life Takes Visa

How do you take a brand pretty much everyone in the civilized world knows and re-brand it after no one's touched the brand for 20 years?

Visa has recently taken on that challenge.   They replaced "Everywhere you want to be" with "Life takes Visa".   

What I found most interesting was - they have made the web and digital media the focus of the new brand roll out.  In Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg talk about how, for many companies, your website will be the centerpiece of your marketing strategy.  Visa appears to have recognized that as well.

A recent OMMA article discussed Visa's new marketing efforts:

The heart of Visa's new online effort is its microsite, LifeTakesVisa.com. The site hosts about 60 video vignettes (each 60 seconds or less) that feel like well-made home movies. The spots, scattered to look like a collection of Polaroids, illustrate that life takes courage, dads, poets, remedies, spontaneity, trust, and more. Viewers can e-mail the clips to friends. It's a simple concept--post a bunch of videos and invite people to send them to one another--but it's attracted a lot of attention.

So how does this online marketing/branding effort impact women?

I found one vignette that was particularly powerful (and funny) in reaching women.  A guy is at his computer on the phone with, you assume, a tech support person.  The person on the phone is walking him through how to fix a problem.  He's struggling but is able to solve his problem.   He finishes the phone conversation with, "thanks honey, I'll see you at home soon."    I love this because there are a lot of guys who have wives who are more computer savvy than they are.   Kudos to Visa for recognizing that.

There are some problems with the effort.  As others have pointed out, there is no call to action that would tie viewing these video snippets with an action that would take you closer to the brand.  Yes, you can email a friend, but there's no conversion action that lets Visa know you are one step closer to actually taking an action that could end up with Visa making more money.  (other than a virtually invisible link to the main visa website)

It will be interesting to see how Visa's efforts to re-brand itself turn out. 

Is your website a centerpiece for your brand?  Are you creating content that smashes stereotypes and endears you to your female customers?   

Comments

[thebizofknowledge]

I stumbled upon this site as I was in the process of doing some online research. The Visa ad that recognized the computer savy woman is great marketing observation.

[Tsufit]

Enjoyed your Life Takes Visa post. Wonder if it'll turn out to be a good move for Visa or a "New Coke" experience. Only time will tell.
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I agree with Donna. The reason for rusfeal would have made quite clear to you at the time and yet you don't mention it in your question.The only reason you would have a National Insurance card in your name is if you were working. If you were on a visitors visa, you should not have been be working. The fact that you have a UK bank account in a country you are only visiting is not that unusual, but added to the NI card it is almost certainly looking as though you worked when you were last in the UK. UKBA can now check bank accounts of people seeking entry to the UK. If you have had regular payments such as a salary paid into it from a UK source, or made regular cash payments into it when you were last in the UK, that would prove you broke the conditions of your visa.If this is the case, you will almost certainly be refused a visitors visa again. You will also struggle to get a visa in any other EU country as immigration information is shared between the EU countries now.