Challenge
Tribe Payments provides payment technology—including issuer and acquirer processing, banking services, payment gateway and white labelled digital wallets—to any business that serves merchants and consumers. CCgroup was appointed to launch Tribe Payments at Money20/20 Europe, the biggest and most competitive fintech event on the continent – with over 2,200 fintech companies exhibiting.
Tribe needed to drive awareness within their target C-level prospects at banks and fintechs in the extremely competitive payments environment. Tribe also wanted to generate at least 50 marketing qualified leads and attract the interest of at least five potential strategic investors.
Our fintech experts developed a brand position very different to Tribe’s competitors (affinity – customer centric, benefit led, plain speaking – vs. authority – technology centric, feature led, industry terminology). While Tribe Payments arguably has superior technology, in a market of technology one-upmanship, shining a light on expert payments people is how to stand out.
Solution
CCgroup identified the FT as our #1 tier one media target because it has the biggest business reach globally. But we faced a challenge – to secure FT interest CCgroup needed more than a company launch. We needed something bigger that related to the hottest industry issues.
CCgroup uncovered three existing deals Tribe had secured: certification from Mastercard, certification from UnionPay, and a partnership with Starling Bank.
At face value, Starling Bank, a fintech darling, was the obvious company to partner with at launch. However, CCgroup’s knowledge of the payments market led us to focus UnionPay where we felt a sleeping giant of a story was ready to be awoken.
By partnering with UnionPay, Tribe allows banks and fintechs in Europe to issue UnionPay cards – the third largest payment network in the world behind Visa and Mastercard and, to-date, predominantly China-centric. Effectively the partnership meant that for the first-time consumers in Europe could have UnionPay cards in their hands.
This tapped into media fascination with both the expansion of Chinese fintech companies and the challenge to the Visa and Mastercard duopoly. Critically, these are both stories that Stephen Morris, European Banking correspondent at the FT had followed intently in 2019.
While a strong story is great, it was paramount that we turned coverage into sales leads. CCgroup helped develop a short whitepaper focused on how a unique offering for the business could help address a variety of challenges its key buying audiences are facing. The paper was hyper-linked in the launch announcement. Those that wanted to know more about Tribe either contacted direct or downloaded the paper which generated marketing qualified leads.
CCgroup specifically targeted publications that drive investor interest such as the FT and Business Insider. As company talent boosts multiples by up to 2.5 times (McKinsey, 2018), CCgroup’s strategy was to focus on the leadership team, especially the CEO.
“CCgroup exceeded our expectations. In under one month, and in the most competitive environment in fintech, Tribe needed to stand out and gain the interest of prospects and investors. CCgroup devised the strategy and delivered top tier coverage resulting in over 150 MQLs and the interest of global investors”.
Suresh Vaghjiani, CEO of Tribe Payments