Priceless
Mastercard1997
Priceless is a 1997 television campaign for Mastercard, created by McCann Erickson, New York.
The line
There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Mastercard.
Why it works
A financial company admitting money isn't everything — and building the longest-running campaign formula in modern advertising on the admission. The first spot (a father and son at a baseball game, September 1997) priced the tickets, the hot dogs, and then the "real conversation: priceless." The grocery-list structure proved infinitely writable across decades, markets and media; people were making their own 'priceless' lists within months, a meme before memes existed, and the campaign is still running more than 25 years later. It is studied for format as brand asset — a syntax so recognizable that any instance anywhere reinforces the brand — and for emotional positioning in a category that had only ever argued acceptance and interest rates.
Techniques
- Pathos Tallies the price of tickets and hot dogs, then sets a father-and-son conversation beyond price, attaching the card to feelings money cannot buy.
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