<story><title>Great work Visa, now I hate you</title><url>http://modern-products.tumblr.com/post/28855608626/great-work-visa-now-i-hate-you-london-olympics</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dangrossman</author><text>&amp;#62; I simply can&apos;t understand how it could be viewed positively by any consumer&lt;p&gt;Visa&apos;s market research suggests a significant increase in Visa usage and Visa brand value among consumers aware of their Olympic sponsorship (which has been ongoing since 1986, and already committed through the next 4 Olympics games):&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; According to the U.S. Sponsorship Tracker, a Visa commissioned study following the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games conducted by Performance Research, an independent research company, Visa cardholders
who were aware of Visa’s Olympic Games sponsorship claimed a 16 percent and nine percent increase in Visa card usage in Canada and the US respectively. The same report found Visa’s brand equity was 32 percent and 38 percent higher among consumers who were aware of Visa’s sponsorship in Canada 
and the US respectively.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://corporate.visa.com/_media/olympic-games-media-kit/visa-and-the-olympic-games.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://corporate.visa.com/_media/olympic-games-media-kit/vis...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; I&apos;ve been trying really hard to understand why Visa would make such an obviously unfriendly and counter-productive decision&lt;p&gt;The first Olympics game where Visa was exclusively accepted was Calgary 1988. This isn&apos;t a decision they just made.</text></item><item><author>simonw</author><text>I&apos;ve been having enormous trouble understanding the thinking behind the &quot;We are proud to only accept Visa&quot; marketing campaign. I simply can&apos;t understand how it could be viewed positively by any consumer - it&apos;s such an obviously anti-customer thing to do.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve been trying really hard to understand why Visa would make such an obviously unfriendly and counter-productive decision. The only theory I can come up with is that their real customers are the banks, and this is their way of saying to them &quot;We&apos;re so completely ruthless that you&apos;re better off doing deals with us than anyone else&quot;. Seems a bit far-fetched though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jellicle</author><text>&amp;#62;According to the U.S. Sponsorship Tracker, a Visa commissioned study following the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games conducted by Performance Research&lt;p&gt;When a company is paying for research about its own decisions, the research always comes back that the decision was wonderful, or that research firm doesn&apos;t get hired again.</text></comment>
<story><title>Great work Visa, now I hate you</title><url>http://modern-products.tumblr.com/post/28855608626/great-work-visa-now-i-hate-you-london-olympics</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dangrossman</author><text>&amp;#62; I simply can&apos;t understand how it could be viewed positively by any consumer&lt;p&gt;Visa&apos;s market research suggests a significant increase in Visa usage and Visa brand value among consumers aware of their Olympic sponsorship (which has been ongoing since 1986, and already committed through the next 4 Olympics games):&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; According to the U.S. Sponsorship Tracker, a Visa commissioned study following the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games conducted by Performance Research, an independent research company, Visa cardholders
who were aware of Visa’s Olympic Games sponsorship claimed a 16 percent and nine percent increase in Visa card usage in Canada and the US respectively. The same report found Visa’s brand equity was 32 percent and 38 percent higher among consumers who were aware of Visa’s sponsorship in Canada 
and the US respectively.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://corporate.visa.com/_media/olympic-games-media-kit/visa-and-the-olympic-games.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://corporate.visa.com/_media/olympic-games-media-kit/vis...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; I&apos;ve been trying really hard to understand why Visa would make such an obviously unfriendly and counter-productive decision&lt;p&gt;The first Olympics game where Visa was exclusively accepted was Calgary 1988. This isn&apos;t a decision they just made.</text></item><item><author>simonw</author><text>I&apos;ve been having enormous trouble understanding the thinking behind the &quot;We are proud to only accept Visa&quot; marketing campaign. I simply can&apos;t understand how it could be viewed positively by any consumer - it&apos;s such an obviously anti-customer thing to do.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve been trying really hard to understand why Visa would make such an obviously unfriendly and counter-productive decision. The only theory I can come up with is that their real customers are the banks, and this is their way of saying to them &quot;We&apos;re so completely ruthless that you&apos;re better off doing deals with us than anyone else&quot;. Seems a bit far-fetched though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>apike</author><text>A lot of us in Vancouver really resented the &quot;only accepts Visa&quot; thing. It was particularly aggravating in Canada where most people pay with a bank debit card, not Visa or Mastercard.&lt;p&gt;That said, it&apos;s not surprising that the overall effect of the sponsorship was positive since refusing MasterCard and debit was only one small aspect of Visa&apos;s campaign. Reading about this again in London made me all riled up again, but Morgan Freeman&apos;s soothing voice will likely undo the damage soon enough.</text></comment>