The Quisenblog

Let’s say you run the credit card division at American Express. To build revenue (and profits) for your division, you need to do three things: 1) get more people to apply for and use your card, 2) get more merchants to accept your card, and most importantly 3) make your card the preferred method of payment by both consumers and retailers.

Now let’s talk about the barriers to entry. For consumers, it is the fact that the annual fees for your card far exceed those of the MasterCard and Visa cards they can get at their banks, and the fact that fewer merchants accept the card. And for merchants, the barriers are that the merchant fees are significantly higher than with MasterCard or Visa, and that fewer customers carry the card.

So how do you grow your business? With cards dealt the way they are, clearly it’s going to take more than a clever ad campaign to overcome those significant barriers.

In this case, American Express didn’t create a campaign; they created a movement.

The movement was to champion the small Main Street businesses of America by creating “Small Business Saturday”–the Saturday immediately following Thanksgiving and the notorious “Black Friday.”

A huge part of this movement was to rally small business owners to “own” this event and to not only participate, but to also become the medium that promoted it. To harness that, American Express created an entire Small Business Tool Kit free for small business owners which included a host of Small Business Saturday tools they could use to promote their businesses, from store badges and signage to social media templates to expert advice on how to increase sales, whether they were American Express merchants or not.

And to the consumer, rather than run a campaign that said “sign up for our card,” American Express created a quasi-patriotic campaign extolling the economic impact of small businesses and rallying folks to support their local economies for that one day. No mentions of how-our-card-is-better-than-their-card or any of that business. Simply a request that we all join together to support small local businesses. Here is one of the commercials:

The results of the Small Business Saturday campaign? In just two years, 100 million Americans participated. Reported small business sales were up between 20 – 30%. Congress passed a unanimous resolution fin support of Small Business Saturday.

Since 2010, Small Business Saturday has gone from something that didn’t exist to a fixture on the shopping calendar.

Oh, and American Express’s credit card division enjoyed its largest market share ever in 2011. Here’s an engaging video case study on the overall campaign:

Great campaigns come and great campaigns go. But a movement that actually incites people can live forever. And isn’t that a smarter use of your marketing bucks?

Posted by Mickey

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Mickey Creative, On Clients, On Customers, Social Media, strategy American Express, creating a movement, Great ad campaigns, marketing case study, Small Business Saturday

Ah, 2009. Yeah, for the most part it’s been a year you’d like to forget. But though they may have been few and far between, there were some stellar things worth cheering about in the world of marketing. Here is a very short list of some of my favorites, arranged in a bronze-silver-gold kinda way. If you have your own list of kudos you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you.

Bronze: The Tourist Council of Queensland (Australia). This collection of tropical islands along the Great Barrier Reef is indeed a stunning destination. The “normal” way of promoting such a destination is to produce a stunning TV spot with great footage of all the cool stuff you can do there, then run the crap out of it on TV. The Council didn’t have a “TV budget” to work with, but it wasn’t about to let that get in their way. They created an online promotion inviting web site visitors to apply for the “Best Job in the World”—the position of “caretaker” of the islands.

In the words of their web site, “The Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef is a newly created position. There are a few minor tasks that need to be taken care of, but the most important duty is to report back to Tourism Queensland (and the world) and let us know what’s taking place on the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.”

This promotion was pretty much restricted to online and Social Media only, and generated more than 1.4 million application videos being uploaded to the Council’s site. Once the Caretaker was “hired,” fans were invited to follow his daily progress on his blog, creating year-round engagement. Most importantly, in a year when most destinations suffered double-digit declines, Queensland enjoyed its best tourist season ever.

Silver: The “smile” campaign from American Express. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen a TV campaign with such a brilliantly simple concept, impeccable art direction and timeless music. Proof you don’t have to scream at someone to get his full attention.

Gold: All the contributors who made YouTube THE Social Media story of 2009. From Susan Boyle to the Evian Skating Babies to the Microsoft slip-n-slide to the lady who uploaded the home video of her sleep-walking dog (and to the creators of all the mash-ups that followed), the heroes of this emerging platform are many.

With broadband penetration now nearing 70%, and more than 88 million videos being upload just to YouTube every month, the computer and smart phone is becoming the “screen of choice” for many. Look for 2010 to be the “tipping point” in the video revolution, where video will play an important role across all Social Media platforms.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on who deserves to be named a “Marketing Hero of 2009.” Drop us a line.

And may you have a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

Posted by Mickey

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Mickey Ramblings, Social Media American Express, Best Job in the World, Evian, island caretaker, Microsoft slip-n-slide, Rollerskating Babies, smart phone, smile campaign, social media platforms, Susan Boyle, Take Charge, The Tourist Council of Queensland, video revolution, YouTube

Hey, every business has customers they would like to churn out. Sometimes these customers cost too much to maintain. Other times, they just don’t purchase. Either way, you’d prefer it if they just went away. But what do you do about them?

Usually, you have two choices. You can do nothing, in which case the customer will keep bleeding you unless by some miracle he drops off on his own. Or, you can show her the exit, usually by adding some sort of “pain point” that makes it too expensive or too much of a hassle to continue. In either case, you’re not exactly creating a good “story” for the customer to tell later.

American Express, though, is trying something all together different. The company is actually paying some customers to cancel their credit cards. No kidding. The company announced plans to pay some cardholders $300 to leave (these are their least profitable customers). The company could have canceled the cards on its own. Or it could have raised its fees to the point where these customers would scream foul and take off. But execs at American Express figured those options didn’t really jibe with the company’s core values and its Brand Vision.

Paying customers to leave may cost the company money in the short run, but it is creating good will and upholding an image American Express has spent several decades crafting. Coldly firing customers with no thought or consolation was a story American Express didn’t want told about itself.

To me, this is an example of extending a Brand Vision into areas you wouldn’t originally think of. The most optimal use of a Brand Vision is to use it as a “filter” through which to pass not only marketing and communication issues, but operational concerns as well. This ensures you “walk the talk.” And American Express is walking it in style.

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Mickey On Customers advertising, American Express, brand vision, customer service, marketing, Spokane