What a difference a year makes. The images below are from a Mastercard campaign that was developed by McCann Columbia that is built around shared experiences. The imagery is great incorporating the Mastercard logo into a series of engagements that involve eating out, sports, travel, etc. All things that people really aren’t doing right now because of the global Covid-19 pandemic.

The background copy that accompanied the launch of the outdoor campaign read “At Mastercard, we believe in experiences. We believe in the awe of simple things. We believe in those moments where only present matters. To us, that’s priceless and we got the opportunity to merge our logo into some of those occasions for all of the 2019 billboards.”

It’s a great campaign. The visuals alone are fantastic, selling the product/service in a quick read that billboards need to do. The irony is, that there is no way Mastercard and McCann could have foreseen the future when this campaign was being developed. And if it is like any outdoor campaign I’ve ever worked on, there is a pretty solid chance that a number of these billboards are still up in Latin America, which unintentionally drives home the reality of where the world is today. Social distancing, self isolating, and apart from one another. The polar opposite of what this campaign originally set out to champion.

It’s beautiful work though, and the team that created it should be extremely proud of what they produced. Great photography, solid retouching, simple and effective copy… priceless.