Visa’s Commitment to an Audience First Approach

Visa’s global chief marketing officer, Antonio Lucio, centered his key note speech on the first day of the BRITE ’11 conference around Visa’s journey from traditional marketing to a new model, guided by the principals of online communications and social media, an “audience first” approach. In response to today’s changing media consumption landscape he noted that,

Thirty-percent of our media weight is going to digital. Now we have a justification to take that to 40-percent.

Antonio has restructured Visa’s advertising strategy to begin with a strategic media plan, targeting consumers at digital sites where they spend the most time. Based on this plan, the company then begins its creative development along the following three principles:

• Sharing is the new giving
• Participation is the new consumption
• Recommendation is the new advertising

At the end of his talk, Antonio exclaimed, “I’ve been doing this for a very long time, and I have to say I’ve never been as excited to be a marketer as I am today with all the changes and all the opportunity that technology provides.”

BY MATTHEW QUINT