Mastercard enlists Curious George for 'Priceless' campaign

H.A. Rey's monkey hero, Curious George, is joining MasterCard Internation's "Priceless" advertising campaign

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Curious George, the hyperactive monkey whose shenanigans have entertained children for years, joins MasterCard International's "Priceless" advertising campaign next week in what the company says is his first U.S. appearance in an animated television commercial.

The 30-second ad, encouraging automatic bill payment via MasterCard, will start on ABC's telecast of "Monday Night Football" on Aug. 14. It joins MasterCard's rotation of spots touting use of its credit card to simplify modern life and afford users more time to focus on the important but fleeting occurrences in their lives.

"We're kind of losing count, but this is about the 35th or 36th 'Priceless' commercial we've done since we launched the campaign in October of '97," said Larry Flanagan, senior vice president of North American marketing for MasterCard. "It's a good support of the message we're trying to communicate."

He said the New York office of McCann-Erickson Worldwide, the Interpublic Group agency that is MasterCard's advertising agency, came up with "the idea of replacing a checkbook with a storybook, which then led us to 'What is a good storybook character?'

"We found that Curious George was a great companion story as far as a character who gets in and out of trouble and gets out of it with a kind of ease and convenience all the time without missing a beat," Flanagan said in an interview. "That confidence and ease (was what) we wanted to portray in the advertising."

He said another element in using the character was that the monkey has not had widespread media exposure but yet "has very high awareness with consumers."

Curious George and related characters were created by Margaret and H.A. Rey. They are copyrighted and trademarked by Houghton Mifflin Company and licensed to MasterCard by the Universal Studios Licensing, Inc. unit of Seagram Co. Ltd.

Flanagan declined to disclose the cost of the commercial, which will run in 48 countries and be accompanied by a print ad, insert materials for member banks and integration in MasterCard's Web site (http://www.mastercard.com).

According to Taylor Nelson Sofres unit Competitive Media Reporting, which tracks advertising spending, MasterCard spent $180.9 million last year. Through May of this year, it spent $48.9 million, compared with $49.4 million in the year-ago period.

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