MasterCard – Isn’t the Ad got expired?

I was in high school, when I saw the first series of the ad campaign from MasterCard based on the theme – priceless. My personal favorite is the one where a baby is shown exploring a cardboard box, and in the background they show prices of toys, children’s books and other kid’s stuff. In the end, the voice over says- Watching your kid playing with a cardboard box instead – priceless. It was a great work by McCann-Erickson. The whole ad was spun around their famous tagline.

There are some things money can’t buy.
For everything else, there’s MasterCard

The greatness about the ad is that it gave human emotions more value than money. The ad accepted the obvious – Money is not everything in life, but yet it subtly conveyed the message – Money is MasterCard and thus powerfully positioned the brand in the viewer’s mind.

Well, more than a decade has gone now, but still MasterCard is sticking to the ads with same theme. I’ve watched one of their ads during the ICC Champions Trophy recently, with the theme – Being in two places at a time, priceless. Here a husband was giving a treat to his wife on their wedding day, and was also able to follow the cricket commentary. The ad looks a bit monotonous than being interesting. I believe the priceless ad is not ageless and it’s time for MasterCard to lookout for fresh ideas. Well, even their cards will expire in three or four years, then why not an expiry date for their ads?

Also I’ve doubt about their target audiences for the ad. It’s because, MasterCard itself do not issue cards directly, one needs to contact any of the financial institutions whom they have tie ups to get a card. I’ve 2 debit cards and 2 credit cards currently. But none of my bankers bothered to ask me what type of card(Master/Visa/Maestro/..) do I want. Even if they asked me, I really doubt, if I would be able to answer that question properly. May be they can give an answer to this question in their future ads.