June 4 – Mastercard and FIFA just don’t seem to get along. No longer the official credit card of the World Cup – that right belongs to Visa – a hijack marketing campaign by Mastercard fell flat on its face at the weekend.
On Friday Mastercard tweeted a pledged to donate meals to starving children for every goal scored by Lionel Messi or Neymar Jr in any official tournament until March 2020 – the equivalent of 10,000 meals to the World Food Programme (WFP).
What seemed like a good marketing gimmick rapidly turned into a PR disaster as the company was described as “sick” on social media and compared to the villains in the Hunger Games. Comment focussed on the morality of giving meals to under-nourished or starving children based on the outcome of the performance of superstars. “If you’ve got the money just buy the food”, was the overriding sentiment.
Mastercard said the stunt would help to “fight childhood hunger and malnutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean”.
“Over the next 21 months, each goal represents an opportunity to unleash the power of a meal,” the company said in a statement. Mastercard emphasised the campaign was a small part of the company’s “global commitment” to delivering 100 million meals to those in need.
Mastercard has generally steered clear of marketing around FIFA events having been ditched as a sponsor of the World Cup by FIFA in 2006 in favour of Visa, even though Mastercard believed it was still in negotiations to renew its 16-year-old contract for a further eight years. Mastercard later sued FIFA and won damages. But this time round the reputation damage is on Mastercard.
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