On December 6, 2017, Finland celebrated its 100th year of independence. The centenary was celebrated in an epic way throughout the world. Everybody wanted to take part, people, countries and of course brands looking to connect with its audiences. Like most brands, Mastercard wanted to join the festivities and find a way to break through the clutter, making an imprint on people.

It’s no easy task to break through the clutter and reach people when it’s the biggest and noisiest day in many years. The creative idea was to take Mastercard’s iconic brand promise Priceless to Snapchat through a branded national geofilter. It became a timely tribute that inspired people to join in and create their very own tributes to Finland. We actually got people to express themselves through Mastercard’s famous payoff.

The Finnish people are proud to be Finns, especially on the independence day, and especially when celebrating the 100th independence day. We knew many people would go to social media to express their pride, so our our strategy was to find a way where we could join them in that moment. It was also a clearly defined strategy to go beyond the brand’s traditional marketing channels on this day.

We launched an exclusive national geofilter in Finland on December 6. The filter made it possible for the Finnish people to express and create a tribute to their country – through Mastercard and its iconic payoff Priceless.

The campaign reached 589,000 people on Snapchat in Finland – which is 75% of all Snapchat users in the country and more than 10% of the entire Finnish population. Within a few hours, the branded filter was shared more than 190,000 times in chats and stories – reaching 3.6 million impressions and more than 1.9 million earned impressions.