SmartCard Consortium

Marketing a Whole New Way to Pay

Not a credit card. Not a debit card. It was the SmartCard.

Jointly sponsored by Chase Manhattan, Citibank, Visa and MasterCard, the breakthrough new “cash alternative payment system” was to be given a limited launch on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Makovsky’s challenge was not a simple one. No one knew what a SmartCard was and we only had a few months to tell them. We needed to balance the interests of all four partners. And there was always the possibility that something could go wrong. We hit the ground running, delivering results that exceeded our clients’ expectations.

In addition to massive, almost uniformly positive coverage, each of the four members of the SmartCard Consortium received its fare share of attention. And 700 merchants signed up for the program—200 more than our goal.