GlobalAdvertisingStrategies

MoneyGram International, Inc. is a leading global payment services company, providing money transfer services at more than 89,000 remittance agent locations in approximately 170 countries and territories, which makes MoneyGram the second largest provider of money transfers in the world. MoneyGram trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the «MGI» symbol and is included in the Standard and Poor’s MidCap 400 Index.

Situation in Focus:

A well-recognized brand with South Asian, Chinese, Caribbean and other communities, MoneyGram contracted Global to expand company’s presence in Central and Eastern European and Middle Eastern markets in the U.S.
As those markets were oversaturated with competitors, Global was challenged to create a unique multicultural marketing mix to introduce MoneyGram to these markets, to sustain its growth and to retain customer base. In order to effectively meet the challenge, Global has developed and implemented intensive cross-cultural community outreach campaigns in these markets.

Objectives:

• Introduce MoneyGram brand to the specified markets, while projecting an image of culturally sensitive and community-oriented company
• Stimulate growth of market share and transaction volume in the target markets by achieving high customer loyalty levels
• Support company’s expansion in the U.S. and abroad by identifying new market segments and by designing customized marketing solutions

Target Audience:

Eastern European (Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Albanian, etc.) and Middle Eastern Americans (Arab, Turkish, Afghani, etc.)

Services Performed:

• Creative and communications strategy development supporting a unique marketing campaign with heavy emphasis on intensive cross-cultural community outreach and grassroots marketing, based on completed analysis of these highly specific ethnic markets
• Media planning and buying aimed to optimize budgets and to utilize ATL (above-the-line) and BTL (below-the-line) strategies
• Cultural adaptation and in-language creative concept development
• Researched and utilized opportunities for integrated sponsorship and co-branded promotions
• Provided competitive monitoring, media clipping, market trend analysis and strategy recommendations
• Identified a complementary market segment (B2B) and designed a new campaign targeted to local businesses and potential agents of MoneyGram

Outcome:

• Due to the extensive and well-planned community outreach campaign, transactions volume in the targeted markets exceeded the forecasts, demonstrating one of the highest growth rates among all MoneyGram markets in the U.S.
• Success of the campaigns provided evidence of these markets’ high potential and stellar ROI, which led to MoneyGram’s decision to significantly expand their presence in these and other ethnic markets in the U.S.
• Subsequently, MoneyGram tasked Global to extend the marketing campaign in North America to include ethnic markets in Canada using Global’s marketing solutions and optimization methods.