• by Danielle Oster , Yesterday

HED: 

Some version of Visa’s “Everywhere You Want To Be” tagline has been running for most of the past 40 years, but the credit card brand is putting a new spin on it with a campaign launched this week.

Created in partnership with actor Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort, the campaign puts a comedic spin on the well-recognized line by positioning Visa at some places you’d rather not be as well. Narrated by Reynolds, “And Some Places You Don’t” alludes to the Fyre Festival fiasco of 2017, putting the viewer in the perspective of an attendee of the infamous event. Billed as a “luxury musical festival,” it instead left attendees stranded on a Bahama island with little more than, as the spot puts it, “half a slice of cheese and a glass of freshly-squeezed ocean water.”

The ad will run across major U.S. channels and digital platforms through the end of the month. 

Reynolds’ Maximum Effort came to Visa with the concept for the campaign. Visa told Marketing Daily the brand didn’t have any hesitation in toying with the tagline, instead seeing it as “an opportunity to modernize while honoring the original,” which “keeps its spirit intact, but adds a layer of humor and cultural relevance.”

At the same time, it reinforces Visa’s core strengths—security, convenience, and global acceptance,” the brand added.

Visa didn’t rule out the possibility of future ads exploring the “And Some You Don’t” theme. “This is the first ad to explore this creative angle,” the brand said. “While no additional spots have been confirmed under this same theme, as part of Visa’s brand evolution, we continue to explore new ways to connect with audiences across different channels and categories, through humor and culturally relevant storytelling.”

The spot also snipes at rival American Express, with the only way off the island a guy named Rusty with a boat who “does not take emotional distress.”

Visa initially introduced the “It’s Everywhere You Want To Be” tagline, created by its then creative agency of record, BBDO New York, with a campaign launched in 1985. Running for the next two decades, the campaign focused on the card’s acceptance rate, highlighting places where rivals like American Express and MasterCard were not. As card acceptance rates became less of an issue, Visa made the decision to end the campaign, and named TBWA its global lead creative agency ahead of the 2006 Winter Olympics, where it introduced the “Life Takes Visa” campaign, according to Encyclopedia.com.

The brand subsequently returned to BBDO as creative lead in 2012, and re-introduced a shortened “Everywhere You Want To Be” tagline with a campaign launched with a “Flying” spot during the 2014 Winter Olympics.

“We recognized that, for the first time in Visa’s 55-year history ‘everywhere’ is now within reach of ‘everyone,’” Visa Chief Brand Officer Antonio Lucio said in a statement at the time, thanks to ecommerce and mobile payment advancements.

“And Some You Don’t” isn’t the only bit of Fyre Festival-related news this week, as LimeWire acquired the rights to the Fyre Festival brand from co-founder Billy McFarland via an eBay auction.

LimeWire said it plans to unveil plans for the revived FyreFestival brand in the coming months, alluding to a “reimagined” version of the brand which “expands beyond the digital realm and taps into real-world experiences” in a release announcing the news, which noted Maximum Effort also bid on the brand.