Mastercard decides to make alliances with restaurants, focusing efforts on waiters, offering incentives such as educational scholarships. We managed to increase the brand recommendation and billing in the most iconic Peruvian restaurants, delivering educational scholarships to hundreds of waiters.
The Challenge
In Peru, the restaurant segment has a high presence and investment in promotional activities by the financial industry to boost the usage of its products. In addition to this, the waiters have the custom to promote the brand of card that is most often received at the time of delivering the bill. This difference in market share makes it very challenging for Mastercard to be the most recommended brand in restaurants.
Until July 2022, only 2% of the waiters used to recommend Mastercard at the moment of payment.
The challenge was to win the recommendation of the waiters so that they keep us in their minds and recommend us. To do this, we had to go beyond a monetary incentive (something that could easily be surpassed by the competitors), we had to bet on something that adds value to their future and reinforces their commitment to the restaurant and our brand.
Insight and Strategy
Education is a powerful tool to inspire change in people.
Waiters and waitresses are the main influencers in a restaurant. They usually recommend a dish or a card for payment based on their experience and custom. To generate a change in their behavior, they had to be encouraged with something thought 100% for them, something that impacts their future and goes beyond just the monetary. That is why, as an incentive, we wanted to bet on their professional growth, taking into account that education is something that would add to their resume and would allow them to continue growing, especially in times of uncertainty. This action would turn them into our main allies. The incentive plan consisted of giving English educational scholarships, which was the most valued course among the team of waiters and which allowed them to study flexible hours, obtaining a certificate at the end. Support the education of waiters to contribute to their professional development and this way reinforce our brand recommendation.
Execution, Solution and Innovation
Our campaign motto was “Being able to give much more to those who make your experience unique; that is priceless"
We took several steps to ensure success:
- Alliance with high-level billing restaurants: Grupo Acurio Restaurants, Chilis, Madam Tusan, Primos Chicken (70 locations between Lima and the provinces).
- Educational incentive: English scholarships given to waiters.
- Monetary incentive: complementary incentive depending on growth in billing.
- Mystery shopper and Training: to measure improvements in the level of brand recommendation.
- POP material
- Influencers, pop, emailings & digital media: It was important that the final customer find out about the educational contribution that would be delivered by Mastercard and motivate the visit to the restaurant.
The hero of the creative pieces were the waiters and the message that we highlighted the most was the educational incentive. The waiters were the protagonists of the amplification actions, telling their stories of improvement and what it meant for them to be waiters.
In the communication we reinforced that by paying the bill with Mastercard in the participating restaurants, we were contributing to the professional growth of the waiters, it was important to make it known in order to also attract the final customer.
Result and Business Effect
In just 5 months, the campaign aggressively exceeded expected results. We turned waiters into our main allies, increasing our brand recommendation by 250% (+3.5x vs. the planned objective). Our billing grew 16% vs. the period prior to the campaign (3x vs. average growth in the restaurant category), increasing our market share by +10% in participating restaurants (+1pp share). More than 210 waiters awarded with educational incentives within the 70 participating locations.
