Background

Square was the no.1 card payment service in the US and enabled 2 million, mostly small businesses, globally, to take card payments. However, despite their global success, Square only had 1% share of the market in the UK.  They needed the campaign to generate awareness, consideration and uptake and our work delivered against this in a humanly relevant and engaging way – squarely and fairly.

The Problem

Square had virtually no awareness and had not engaged with the audience of small businesses and sole traders despite investing significant amounts on numerous marketing campaigns.   

The problem was that this audience were incredibly difficult to engage with – small business owners and sole traders don’t necessarily see themselves as businesses and so don’t see business communication messages as relevant to them.  

Our Strategy

We needed to convince our audience that Square was the mobile payment device for them not simply because it met their needs but because it understood them better than any other brand and championed their cause.  We wanted to put Square right at the heart of Britain’s small business culture so we created a campaign that acted as a rallying cry for small businesses countrywide – it recognized the contribution of small businesses to the economy overall and thanked them.  This idea gave Square a platform for communicating that they were, in fact, a fairer card payment system which gives puts customers first with things like next day payment.  

We launched with the idea “Square and Fair”.   Not just through the traditional big brand building mediums of ATL but through regional press, online, social and PR

Results

The results have been extraordinary with brand awareness up by 40% and peak day web visits up by 34% versus the campaign target.  New customer acquisitions have gone through the roof with peak day increase in new merchant acquisitions of 94% versus the campaign target.