The financial services industry has spent decades trying to make credit cards seem like something other than credit cards. Visa wants to be everywhere you want to be. American Express wants you to know membership has its privileges. Now Mastercard, it seems, wants you to know it cares about the Dominican restaurant in Queens where your favorite food influencer eats.

The company has begun a video series in which creators with large social media followings visit small, under-the-radar restaurants, tell their stories, and present them with $10,000 grants. The creators then post the content to their own feeds, where it reaches the millions of followers who have come to trust their recommendations about where to eat.

"We're Mastercard, we have a loud voice, but creators are the ones taking over," said Ginger Siegel, the company's small and medium business lead in North America, in an interview with Digiday.

Nicolas Nuvan, a creator with several million followers across Instagram and TikTok, visited a favorite Dominican restaurant of his for the series. He said Mastercard allowed him to produce the content himself, which he described as "really emotional." (Financial terms of his arrangement were not disclosed, which is to say they were not disclosed.)

The strategy reflects what has become an increasingly crowded intersection in the marketing landscape: creators who behave like small businesses, and small business owners who behave like creators. Jo Wong, general manager and chief revenue officer at POP.STORE, noted that many food creators now run supper clubs, pop-ups, or product lines of their own.

"The definition of small business has grown right alongside the definition of creator, and honestly the two are becoming the same person," Ms. Wong said.

Ms. Siegel said Mastercard is not tracking individual consumers through the creator content for marketing purposes. The goal, she said, is to build a culture in which the company is seen as one that genuinely cares about small businesses — though she did not specify how that caring would be measured.

Ms. Wong offered one caution: audiences can tell when a partnership is merely transactional. "The moment this looks like a top-down campaign with talking points instead of creators actually using the product day to day, it stops working," she said.

Mastercard, for its part, seems to understand that authenticity, like a good meal, cannot be rushed.

Original story published in Digiday: "Mastercard is tapping foodie creators to drive awareness and adoption"