In our story, a little girl and dog lose their favorite ball and their neighbor, Neymar Jr., springs into action to help retrieve it. Seemingly with a mind of its own, we follow the ball’s journey as it eludes capture by some of the world’s top athletes across different sports who come together to help, including: Lionel Messi, Ana Ivanovic, Dan Carter, Bryan Habana, Annika Sörenstam, and Valeri Kamensky. They go to great lengths to try and catch and eventually pass the ball to get it back home. The world watches as the ball crosses continents in its journey.

The film highlights the athleticism of the stars, and the realization of athletic potential in the little girl when she makes the final, heroic leap to retrieve the ball.

Mastercard believes that when we work together everything is possible, and there’s no better example of this philosophy than sports, which reflects the values of teamwork, generosity and inclusion that move us forward not only in the games we play, but also in the world we live.

Through “Together Everything is Possible”, Mastercard will be showcasing the power of connections and the importance they play in our world. This program will unite fans by leveraging Mastercard’s leadership in contactless payments and the company’s recognition of the importance of connecting with others, in real life or in social and digital realms with meaningful connections.

By the literal passing of the Red Ball in the creative, Mastercard will remind consumers of the importance and value of being together and hopes to inspire people to engage, experience and share the content in a manner that reminds them of the importance of human connections.

The hero film was designed to be modular, as a global film launching in 50+ countries. It was adapted around the world to suit markets’ needs, which needed to be considered from the onset of execution. This cross functional, global effort highlighting Contactless technology was developed in a modular and flexible way to allow for maximum global efficiency and local relevance. There are multiple cuts available for different markets to take into account the different stages of contactless awareness and availability, as well as their sport passion.

It was shot across three continents over the course of two months, leveraging creative technologies to achieve a seamless end product.

Launched globally on ambassador social media channels, the work will continue to evolve digitally and via experiential activation through Mastercard’s sponsorships of five key sports properties (UEFA Champions League Final, Copa America, The Open Championship, French Open & Rugby World Cup.

43.7M Views of “The Red Ball” video content, 2.1M Likes, 82K Shares, & 20K Comments in the first week

39.4 views have been paid, at less than a $0.01 CPV

• A $0.01 CPV that surpasses both the FB avg. for CPV of $0.05 & our Mastercard avg. of $0.06

4M views have been organic

The campaign reached over 73M consumers across key markets in just one week, with an overall engagement rate of nearly 8X the MC average

• There have been 8.7M completed views of the video across paid posts

• 236M impressions of “The Red Ball” served to date on $326K in paid media

o Resulting in a CPM of just $1.28, which is a historical low for both iProspect & Mastercard

2-minute hero video saw a $0.45 cost per video COMPLETION, which is the same cost Per Completed view as most 3 second Hollywood film trailers.