Accounts Playable

Experience had shown us that there were two basic stumbling blocks to changing attitudes of skeptical German retailers regarding card acceptance. The first was the complexity of the information. The second was a deeply ingrained belief that card payments are too expensive and unnecessary, since they are not an integral part of the German shopping tradition. The way forward was to communicate our rational arguments in a simple and engaging way, but also to provide an emotional trigger for change.

We developed an illustration style that, when animated, would be fun to watch while still maintaining the seriousness people expect from financial institutions. Using these illustrations and simple animations, we could reel in our visitors wherever they were on the path to card acceptance and lay out our arguments with strong visuals. Thus we could tell a story that was memorable and very easy to understand.

As a counterpoint to the whimsical illustrative style, we created authentic documentary shorts of three highly innovative and exciting retail outlets that all accept cards. Especially surprising is that these businesses – a bakery, a café and a hair blowout bar – are all low-ticket and, in Germany, traditionally cash only. The films illustrate to retail owners that entrepreneurial success nowadays means offering the kind of customer service in which card acceptance is now a standard.