NEW YORK: Visa, the payments company, is seeking to become a "liquid" brand that moves well beyond plastic credit and debit cards to be present everywhere consumers want to undertake transactions.
Chris Curtin, the organisation's chief brand/innovation officer, discussed this subject at the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands Round Table event in New York.
"We are sitting back and thinking about Visa as a 'liquid' brand," he said. (For more, including details of the new skills required by its marketers, read Warc's exclusive report: Visa aims to become a "liquid" brand.)
More specifically, the advent of technologies like near field communication, smartphone apps and wearable tech has provided an increasingly diverse array of opportunities for the company.
"For us at Visa, we're very, very, very focused on: how do we make sure that we live up to our promise, which is 'Everywhere you want to be'?" said Curtin.
"And if you want to pay with your watch, if you want to pay with your card, we're going to be there."
The firm's initiatives in this space have thus spanned everything from tapping into Apple Pay to creating "shoppable" videos with home-products group Williams-Sonoma and partnering with ecommerce start-up Stripe.
It has even worked with Pizza Hut, the restaurant chain, and Accenture, the consultancy, to test a new payment model by building a proof-of-concept connected car.
The scope and nature of these efforts indicates why being a "liquid" brand is so important to payments providers like Visa, as their services are increasingly integrated into different experiences.
"Payments used to be … a bolt on to a shopping or browsing experience. And now it's becoming endemic to that experience," said Curtin.
In response, Visa needs to be "a brand that can find its way into a watch, a brand that can find its way into a phone, a brand that can find its way into a car that is far more intelligent than perhaps even the cars we drive today, and a brand that can find its way into this phenomenon of the internet of things."
Chris Curtin, the organisation's chief brand/innovation officer, discussed this subject at the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands Round Table event in New York.
"We are sitting back and thinking about Visa as a 'liquid' brand," he said. (For more, including details of the new skills required by its marketers, read Warc's exclusive report: Visa aims to become a "liquid" brand.)
More specifically, the advent of technologies like near field communication, smartphone apps and wearable tech has provided an increasingly diverse array of opportunities for the company.
"For us at Visa, we're very, very, very focused on: how do we make sure that we live up to our promise, which is 'Everywhere you want to be'?" said Curtin.
"And if you want to pay with your watch, if you want to pay with your card, we're going to be there."
The firm's initiatives in this space have thus spanned everything from tapping into Apple Pay to creating "shoppable" videos with home-products group Williams-Sonoma and partnering with ecommerce start-up Stripe.
It has even worked with Pizza Hut, the restaurant chain, and Accenture, the consultancy, to test a new payment model by building a proof-of-concept connected car.
The scope and nature of these efforts indicates why being a "liquid" brand is so important to payments providers like Visa, as their services are increasingly integrated into different experiences.
"Payments used to be … a bolt on to a shopping or browsing experience. And now it's becoming endemic to that experience," said Curtin.
In response, Visa needs to be "a brand that can find its way into a watch, a brand that can find its way into a phone, a brand that can find its way into a car that is far more intelligent than perhaps even the cars we drive today, and a brand that can find its way into this phenomenon of the internet of things."
Data sourced from Warc
