Mastercard Enters ‘New Frontier’ in Sensory Marketing: A Haptic Logo

From sonic branding to perfumes and restaurants in New York and São Paulo, Mastercard has leveraged almost every sense to engage and assure customers. Now, it’s turning to touch.

The brand is debuting a haptic logo, a distinctive series of vibrations that customers will “feel” via their phone when shopping online or using a payment terminal.

Revealing the news during the Brandweek conference in Phoenix, Mastercard chief marketing officer Raja Rajamannar told ADWEEK the haptic logo is designed to increase trust, security, and satisfaction among shoppers. It is meant to reinforce the brand in that uncertain moment when a transaction is pending at checkout.

“There’s always a tiny bit of uncertainty in people’s minds when they’re paying,” said Rajamannar. “This gives them a sense of completion, and we’re tapping into that psychology.”

Rajamannar believes the innovation represents a “new frontier” for marketing. “We’re literally defining a new boundary and field altogether,” he said, adding that the tactile branding has driven a points increase in customer satisfaction within the tune of the “high teens to low 20s.”

The vibrations of the haptic logo were developed in partnership with McCann and vibrate in rhythm with Mastercard’s sonic logo, a sound distinctive to the brand, which launched in 2019.

It will initially launch in Latin America and Eastern Europe, and 12 months from now, Rajamannar hopes to implement the haptic logo in 50 million of the brand’s point-of-sale outlets globally. The sonic melody is currently present in 600 million outlets.

Selling in ‘crazy’ innovation

Each of the payment provider’s multisensory endeavors forms part of its wider, long-standing, experience-driven “Priceless” platform.

While Mastercard’s jingle has taken longer to implement in large markets, including the U.S., internal data shows that the innovations are paying off.

When the unique 1.3-second sequence of notes is presented at checkout, Mastercard claims that it boosts consumer trust and makes customers 80% more likely to return to the merchant utilizing the sound.

In a year when inflationary pressures and tighter consumer spending have driven marketing budgets to decline to 7.7% of overall company revenue in 2024 (down from a pre-Covid-19 average of 11%, as per Gartner), marketing innovation can be a hard sell to the C-suite.

However, Rajamannar has a winning formula that helps push his team’s experiments and drives a culture of experimentation within the wider business.

“We set aside a very small percentage of a marketing budget for crazy innovation,” he said. “For marketing that thinks outside of the box and pushes boundaries. Within that context, people are more willing to experiment because the [budget] is so small and declared in advance.”

Showcasing measurable success from previous investments also helps. Five years ago, when the brand famously removed its name from its logo, Rajamannar recalls then-CEO Ajay Banga being “appalled” at the initial suggestion.

“But the board understood it, we got the backing, and it was high-risk,” he said, adding that the move ultimately paid off, with 84% of consumers now recognizing the branding sans text.

His biggest learning from Mastercard’s early experiments in haptic?

“Customers have so many minuscule anxieties and uncertainties, but they all add up. When you address even the tiny little bit of that uncertainty, the amount of return you get in favor of your brand is awesome,” he concluded.