In his BlogWell New York presentation, Visa's Senior Business Leader of Global Corporate Social Media, Lucas Mast, shares how they incorporated social media into a major event sponsorship. Lucas talks about they utilized video content to promote their official sponsorship of the 2012 London Olympics. Watch the video of this presentation here: https://vimeo.com/51965390

1. SocialMedia.org
Video Case Studies
SocialMedia.org
This video is from
Case Studies
BlogWell
San Francisco
June 20, 2011
This presentation is from
socialmedia.org/blogwell
BlogWell Lucas Mast
New York
September 12, 2012 Visa Corporate Social Media:
socialmedia.org/blogwell Learnings from London 2012

2. Visa Corporate Social Media:
Learnings From London 2012
Visa Confidential 1

3. What We Aimed to Accomplish
Visa Viewpoints Mobile Studio : Brief interviews with Visa
executives, partners, clients and Team Visa athletes for use on Visa
corporate channels (internal/external)
Photo/Video “Viewpoints from London”
Postcard style documentation of Visa’s sponsorship presence and
activations (branding, retail stores, merchants, cardholders,
contactless/terminals, etc.) around London and at Olympic venues
On-site news/marketing support
Leverage Visa news (e.g. Samsung) created in London to syndicate
across corporate social media channels and assist marketing team in
capturing content
London 2012 Olympic Games

4. Laying the Foundation: Training & Education
• Training required for all
employees attending Olympic
Games, with more detailed
content for managers of global
social media channels
• Topics included marketing &
brand campaign, Team Visa
athletes, operations/logistics &
corporate communications
• Daily taskforce meetings during
games included representatives
from Corporate Relations,
Marketing, Legal, Product & Visa
Europe
London 2012 Olympic Games 3

5. Challenges We Encountered
• Olympics rules and regulations created
heightened environment of restricted behavior
• Difficult to secure interviews with Team Visa
athletes (schedules, cancellations)
• Media/influencers more focused on athletic
competition than brand/sponsorship issues
• Efforts to promote content we were creating
fell short due to time zones and staffing.
• Underestimated time/resources to capture,
edit, create and review content
• Internal reviews/restrictions/approvals
hindered the ability to post content in real time
London 2012 Olympic Games 4

6. Additional Guidelines and Limitations
• No photos or video from inside
Olympic venues on corporate social
media sites
• Photos/videos must be reviewed both
internally and by IOC
• No posting results until after the TV
broadcast partner has aired the
broadcast/posted the results digitally
• Rule 40: Athletes may not promote
any brand, product or service during
games or credit company for
performance during games
• 24/7 moderation of channels required,
with derogatory comments removed in
timely manner
• Only reference Team Visa athletes in
Visa social media content
London 2012 Olympic Games 5

7. Our Content Goals: How We Fared
• Our goals
– Conduct multiple executive and Team Visa athlete interviews
– Post 2-3 items to Visa Viewpoints each day (1 video post/day)
– Photographic documentation of sponsorship (Flickr)
– Tweets (3-4/day)
– Sharing content with others (global CR, employee comms,
Talent Acquisition, marketing)
• What we accomplished
– 5 executive interviews
– 2 Interviews with Team Visa/Olympic athletes (Strug, Phelps)
– 26 blog posts over two weeks (9 photo posts, 12 video posts)
– 50+ tweets from VisaNews (2-3/day)
– 8 blog posts reposted via InSite Olympics Hub
– Created content for Security CR team, Brazil, and China
London 2012 Olympic Games 6

8. Metrics: Crunching the Numbers
• Increased @VisaNews followers on Twitter by 10%
• Average monthly traffic for Visa Viewpoints doubled
during the two weeks of London 2012 coverage
• Amassed 1000+ views of videos posted to Visa
Communication YouTube channel:
– What worked: Live product demo with Visa Global
Head of Mobile Bill Gajda (550+ views), Team Visa
athletes (500+ views), later executive interviews
(250+ views)
– What didn’t work: Early executive interviews
• First time Visa Viewpoints has produced 25+ posts in
the course of two weeks with an authentic voice and
persona
• Social sharing: 1000+ links to our content created
during the Olympics across the web
London 2012 Olympic Games 7

9. Live Demos: Bringing News to Life
– Live demos take some planning,
some luck and an executive
willing to go with the flow
– Doing a live demo (and shooting
a few versions) allows people to
see real technology in the wild
– Less “corporate” content allowed
for interest from media outlets—
including Geek.com which
created a blog post around the
video and tweeted it to their 16K
followers
– Tip: If you want to shoot at a
store, secure the necessary
approvals in advance (and be
prepared for people to say no)
London 2012 Olympic Games 8

10. Sharing Content With Employees
– Employee Communications team
created landing page on InSite
(corporate intranet) for London
Olympics content
– Worked with Employee
Communications to syndicate
the content we were creating in
London to drive employee
awareness and engagement
– Visits from employees accounted
for 10% of visitors to Visa
Viewpoints for London 2012
content
London 2012 Olympic Games 9

11. Content For Colleagues: Chip & Signature
Demo
– Help me help you: Connecting
with colleagues in advance can
help everyone get interesting,
useful content
– Creating a detailed script
ensures that you get the shots
you need (and saves time in
post-production editing)
– Tip: Privacy rules vary by
country—understanding
necessary approvals will make
the lawyers more comfortable
with the content
London 2012 Olympic Games 10

12. Building a Better Executive Interview
– Being on-message is important,
but being interesting creates
engagement
– Shooting an executive multiple
times leads to more comfortable,
more natural answers
– Asking narrower questions and
limiting responses to <1 minute
makes for shorter, social-media
friendly content
– Think about Q&A that are
interesting to external audiences
– Executives are busy—plan for
reschedules and cancellations
– Consider your environment—a
controlled, quiet room can come
off as overly corporate (and even
boring)
London 2012 Olympic Games 11

13. Team Visa: Social Media Gold
– Video interviews and behind the scenes moments
with Team Visa athletes leverages access
– Real engagement with athletes allows us to tap into
their extensive social media networks
– Tip: Like executives, athletes are busy people. They
are also competing, so if they don’t perform well,
they might not want to do media.
London 2012 Olympic Games 12

14. Other People’s Social Media: Cadbury UK
– Social media content should be less about
broadcasting content and more about
engaging in dialogue
– Think about who else on Twitter might care
about your content—and how you can actually
engage with them
– In this example, making the content more
conversational and attaching CadburyUK (and
their 67K Twitter followers) led to unexpected
retweets
London 2012 Olympic Games 13

15. Reaching For the Stars
– We identified a post from RyanSeacrest.com and used it to share our
latest congratulatory video to offer context and relevance.
– Turned tweet approvals around in real-time (30 minutes from IDing
the article and reaching out to @RyanSeacrest and his 7.6M
followers)
– Identifying opportunities can lead to engagement. [Not everything will
lead to a retweet—but like the lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play.]
London 2012 Olympic Games 14

16. Postcards from London
– Visa was literally everywhere you turned—being able to document it for people not in
London expanded our presence to blog audience
– Photos told a story of the various activations around London—from brand and
sponsorship, technology and innovation and cardholder usage
– Colorful and casual posts lent a more human voice to the images—more casual tone
than typical Visa Viewpoints posts
London 2012 Olympic Games 15

17. Technology Tool: Storify
• Storify is a digital storyboard that allows you to centralize social and digital
media content (blog posts, Flickr photos, tweets, YouTube videos, online
articles) in one location
• Visa London 2012 Storify Page: http://storify.com/visanews/visa-from-london
• Corporate relations team was easily able to share themes (innovation,
travel/tourism, branding/sponsorship) with media
London 2012 Olympic Games 16

18. Key Learnings From London
• Being on location is key to identifying interesting content opportunities.
• Creating the content is half of the equation, but promoting the content
is equally important.
• You can’t use content you do not capture. Shoot first, secure
permission later.
• Social media content should be bite-sized and be put up quickly.
• Photos can be an easier , equally engaging alternative to video.
• Executive interviews are more interesting when tied to news or offer
“behind the scenes” access.
• Getting a streamlined approval process in place is essential.
• Media are interested in leveraging access at events—working with
them early is a key to coverage.
London 2012 Olympic Games 17

19. Thank you!
Lucas Mast
Visa Inc.
lmast@visa.com
@VisaNews
Visa Confidential 18

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