Forging an Identity for a Strategic Region

Our client Mastercard shared with us a challenging need: to establish the identity of their Caribbean business region.
The request arose from a strategic goal of the Company: the Caribbean region of Mastercard is the top seller in LAC (Latin America and the Caribbean), and it stands out due to its great innovation and diversity: the region is formed by 27 islands, and it comprises 12 currencies and 8 languages.

The region has its headquarters in Miami, which hosts a team of people from different countries. Furthermore, the region is formed by various countries: with different backgrounds, socioeconomic realities and very diverse histories. Therefore, it lacked a defined identity. This was a pending issue for the Mastercard organization, since encouraging a sense of belonging in the team was paramount to drive growth.

We started working on the main concept. One of the region’s key strengths was their ability to innovate: many of Mastercard’s innovative products and services are first implemented in the Caribbean and then replicated in other markets. That was the main point around which we formulated the core concept. The other idea was the ability to scale innovation to the rest of the Mastercard organization. That is how we came up with a statement that would identify the region: Innovation beyond borders.

This statement was combined with a visual campaign that featured color, diversity, power and dynamism, and the main characters were the members of the team. The goal was to help them experience the identity as their own.

An isotype inspired by Mastercard’s main brand was created to generate a visual identity that would be immediately identified not only by the members of the Caribbean team but also by the entire company.

Once the main identity had been established, a campaign was launched that prompted the team members to send a selfie together with a brief phrase describing their main contribution to the team.

A video was also released featuring members of the Caribbean team. It was shown in an internal event where the brand was presented, and the following stage of the communication campaign started, which consisted of communication pieces that included the selfies received together with the quotes, adapted to the campaign’s visual identity.

Oxean Cross content creation agency MASTERCARD CARIBBEAN

The team members actively participated in the project, sending their selfies and creating messages to share with everyone else.
For the development of this project, Grupo Oxean worked with a team formed by an account manager, a content director, an art director, two graphic designers, an editor, an audiovisual producer, a video editor, and a motion grapher.

The new identity made a great impact on the Caribbean team of Mastercard. They immediately embraced it as their own and found a way to integrate the new proposal on their daily work. As a result, now they can see themselves as a homogeneous, diverse and innovative region with great growth potential and a shared idea that drives them forward.