How Mastercard Hijacked an Eclipse with an Astronomical Sale

It’s not every day that nature decides to support a brand, but on December 26, 2019, the Sun and the Moon teamed up for a solar eclipse that occurs once every five generations – and which also unlikely painted the Mastercard logo in the sky.

The eclipse was visible in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Oman, across southern India and Sri Lanka, to Indonesia and Malaysia.

This once in a lifetime eclipse mirrored the Mastercard logo – exactly - at two particular points, so Mastercard and its agency FP7 (part of McCann Worldgroup) decided to celebrate by giving its customers the sale of the century to coincide with the sight of the century.

The event, 'Astronomical Sales', featured prices on Mastercard’s partner website Noon.com that diminished with the sun. In other words, as the amount of the sun visible declined, so did the prices on the website. When the eclipse reached 97%, Mastercard holders received a 97% discount on an array of products. But this event lasted only for the brief window of almost-total eclipse. Once the sun started revealing itself again, the prices increased, until the eclipse, and the sale, ended.

The world has not seen a 'ring of fire' eclipse for 172 years and another eclipse like it won’t be visible again for just short of 100 years. So this event was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. 

Since the eclipse painted the Mastercard logo in the sky at two different times, Mastercard is rewarding two lucky shoppers with priceless experiential prizes – but only if they managed to pay for their purchases at one of the two exact moments in which the sun and moon intersected to form the Mastercard logo.

To create excitement in the region about the sale, Mastercard secured some of the busiest out of home advertising spaces in the UAE, as well as an array of digital and print creative in the region.