CHALLENGE

In Romania, most of the small farmers do not have access to farmer’s markets.

Sellers who offer fruit, vegetable, and cheese, just put a table in front of their home by the road and wait for the buyers to find them. 99.9% of them do not afford to invest into receiving card payments.

Mastercard saw this as a huge opportunity to get involved in helping small farmers deliver their products to a large audience and, at the same time, promote in a very impactful manner the Mastercard payments.

Romania is also moving into a cashless society, and empowering card payments was the key to getting new clients and public at large to visit more small farmers.

STRATEGY

We based our campaign on an enormously powerful insight: When card payments were encouraged to be used as part of the government recommendation to prevent COVID, the small farmers were left aside and needed help.

Our strategy was to create Roadside Market to help the farmers thrive by providing financial counselling and the digital context to promote their products.

Mastercard facilitated the financial process by digitalizing the payments and promoting the farmers and their products.

We integrated sellers to Waze, one of the most famous GPS navigation software apps, with customized pins that would pop up on the maps of drivers. This way anybody who wanted to buy fresh products from farmers would easily find them in their way.

All the pins put together represent a community of vulnerable farmers who were unable to sell their products because of COVID public market restrictions.

Our media mix included digital, targeted OOH (Out of Home) and Radio formats that detailed the mechanism and made easy for everybody to understand and to use it.

RESULTS

• Three Cannes Lions prizes: 1 Gold, 2 Silver for media and commerce
• Engagement rate 2,32%, 1.7 X higher vs. benchmark
• 1,08 CTR% vs. 0,37% benchmark
• 4,2 million reach, 20 million impressions
  
  Campaign sparked a national conversation in traditional and online media, with the country’s 5 largest TV stations covering the news and an impressive OTS estimated at 28 million views in the first 48 hours;
  
  The Romanian Agriculture Minister was impressed by the idea and asked how they could join to help extend this project as they see the initiative as a solution to boost sales in poor and isolated small farmers communities;
  
  + A lot of happy farmers who felt support when they need it the most.