Mastercard: Here to Stay
Mastercard challenged McCann Poland to address the severe labor shortage in Slovakia. The client wanted to leverage their data assets to improve economic inclusion for migrants. The objective was to create a scalable tool that helped underemployed professionals find work matching their actual qualifications, thereby unlocking latent economic potential and demonstrating the brand's commitment to social impact.
Creative Idea
A digital tool matched migrant professional skills to local labor market vacancies.
Mastercard launched a digital tool that matches the professional qualifications of migrants with labor market needs, transforming underemployed foreign talent into a vital economic engine by bridging the gap between systemic bureaucratic barriers and verified job opportunities.
Turning Underemployment Into An Economic Engine
Unlocking Billions In Latent Potential
The platform was designed to address a stark economic paradox in Slovakia, where a shortage of 105,000 workers coexisted with a high rate of migrant underemployment. By integrating aggregated Mastercard transaction data with labor market insights and migration expertise, the tool successfully mapped complex career pathways. This data-driven approach is estimated to unlock up to 18.22 billion euros in latent economic potential by aligning professional skills with market demand. User engagement was significant, with 30 percent of visitors completing the full platform journey to access personalized career guidance.
A Multidisciplinary Data Collaboration
The project relied on a complex ecosystem of partners to bridge the gap between bureaucratic barriers and professional opportunity. Beyond the creative leadership of McCann Poland and McCann Prague, the initiative incorporated essential expertise from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Slovakia’s primary job portal, Profesia.sk. The production process involved a massive team of specialists, including digital producers Igor Pašek and Jakub Křen, alongside strategic planners Oriol Bombi and Aleš Vyhlídal.
Authentic Human Centered Storytelling
The campaign avoided traditional celebrity endorsements, opting instead for a raw and direct visual style. The creative assets featured authentic testimonies from migrants, utilizing direct-to-camera framing against plain dark backdrops. This aesthetic choice, supported by photography from Tomáš Vrana and Samuel Stárek, ensured the focus remained on human dignity and the practical reality of the career transition process. By reframing foreign workers as a permanent economic asset rather than a temporary labor solution, the campaign established a new model for corporate social responsibility.
Creative Strategy Deconstructed
Company
Mastercard leveraged its vast transactional data and financial infrastructure to provide actionable labor market insights and career pathways.
Category
Financial brands typically focus on transactional utility rather than solving complex, systemic socio-economic labor market inefficiencies.
Customer
Skilled migrants felt invisible and trapped in low-wage jobs despite possessing professional qualifications that the host country desperately needed.
Culture
The intersection of high national labor shortages and the ongoing migration crisis created an urgent need for effective professional integration.
Company
Mastercard leveraged its vast transactional data and financial infrastructure to provide actionable labor market insights and career pathways.
Category
Financial brands typically focus on transactional utility rather than solving complex, systemic socio-economic labor market inefficiencies.
Strategy:
Transform systemic economic inefficiencies into growth opportunities by aligning latent human capital with market demand.
Customer
Skilled migrants felt invisible and trapped in low-wage jobs despite possessing professional qualifications that the host country desperately needed.
Culture
The intersection of high national labor shortages and the ongoing migration crisis created an urgent need for effective professional integration.
Strategy:
Transform systemic economic inefficiencies into growth opportunities by aligning latent human capital with market demand.
Results
The tool reached 23% of overskilled migrants in Slovakia. 30% of users accessed new career pathways, unlocking €18.22 billion in economic growth potential. The platform is already launching in Poland and Czechia.
23%
overskilled migrants reached
30%
accessed new career pathways
€18.22B
economic growth potential unlocked
Strategy Technique
Reframe the Problem
The brand reframed the labor shortage from a lack of workers to a failure of talent allocation. This shift allowed Mastercard to provide a structural solution rather than just a charitable gesture.
Explore Technique
Creative Technique
Expose the Hidden
The campaign reveals the overlooked professional identities of migrants forced into low-skilled labor. It exposes the hidden inefficiency of the labor market by highlighting the contrast between their actual skills and current roles.
Explore Technique
Craft Breakdown
This campaign excels by combining sophisticated digital product design with hypertargeted data-driven media execution to solve a major socioeconomic problem.
The platform seamlessly integrates complex labor market data, AI matching, and cost-of-living calculations into an intuitive UI.
Hypertargeted placement effectively reached overskilled migrants at their specific workplaces and digital touchpoints.
“The synergy between data intelligence and functional UI design transforms abstract policy goals into immediate individual employment opportunities.”
