The Australian Open (AO) is a landmark event in Australia’s summer with the world’s best tennis players competing in the first of four annual global Grand Slam tournaments and Aussies are glued to the action to see who wins.

It’s also a competition for brands, as more and more brands compete for consumer and media attention through their sponsorship.

Our brief was to Start Something Priceless® at the AO to get attention for Mastercard’s sponsorship and stand out from the crowd.

With Mastercard transforming from a traditional payments company to an innovative payments technology provider that connects Australian businesses and consumers, our overall objective was to show how Mastercard can bring communities together through tennis.

Start Something Priceless® is the evolution of Priceless. It’s a call to action to do something meaningful, to connect with others or make something special happen in your life and the world around you.

We knew we needed to do something different to get cut-through for Mastercard in its third year of sponsorship with increasing competition and noise from other brands.

We challenged communities and neighbours to rekindle over a rally.

We broke down the physical barriers that divided neighbours. We removed hedges and fences and replaced them with real tennis nets for people in the community to come together over a rally, all in the name of fun and inspiring new friendships.

Our message was simple, neighbours that rally together, talk more, bond more and, overall, make the community a better place.

We also collaborated with The Happiness Institute on new research to give us stats that would work nationally.

Through a detailed PR media strategy, we built out the perfect media package of content, spokespeople and research to launch Rally Together.

We found that our target audience, affluent Australians, were spending more time on their screens than face to face. What united them was a desire to make true emotional connection in their community.

Our research revealed that nearly 60% of Aussies never speak with their neighbours but being closer to a neighbour would make 90% of Aussies happier. Fear of rejection and feeling awkward was holding them back.

At the same time, we conducted interviews with our target audience about what makes tennis so special. The priceless insight was: it is not just about hitting a ball, but the friendships you walk away with.

Our strategy was to show how tennis could help bring people in local communities back together and help them find the connection they seek.

Content

The two-minute content not only captured the transformation and the rallies between neighbours, it captured emotional reactions to the real connections that had been made between people that lived close to each other but had never spoken.

Case studies and spokespeople

We used the neighbours to act as real-life case studies, showing how tennis can bring people in the community back together.

We combined these with our tennis ambassador and Australian professional player, John Millman, and third-party expert Tim Sharp, aka Dr Happy.

Consumer research

We developed tailored stats and releases for exclusive pitches, media verticals and states to ensure a wide range of coverage.

The news was announced via exclusives with some of Australia’s biggest TV, news and radio stations, e.g. Sunrise, news.com.au and 3AW. We then kicked off more widespread media pitching and feature placements to ensure the campaign had longevity pre, during and post the AO.