American Express: SMALL BUSINESS GETS AN OFFICIAL DAY

Credits & Description:

Type of entry: Best Integrated Campaign
Category: Best Integrated Campaign Led by Direct Marketing
Advertiser: AMERICAN EXPRESS
Product/Service: AMERICAN EXPRESS
Agency: CRISPIN PORTER + BOGUSKY Boulder, USA
Entrant CRISPIN PORTER + BOGUSKY Boulder, USA
Title: SMALL BUSINESS GETS AN OFFICIAL DAY
DM/Advertising Agency: CRISPIN PORTER + BOGUSKY Boulder, USA
2nd DM/Advertising Agency: DIGITAS New York, USA
Executive Vice President/Marketing: Mark Kiernan (Digitas)
Vice President/Director of Marketing: Roger Box (Digitas)
Associate Director of Marketing: Alex Jacobs (Digitas)
Vice President/Group Director ofMedia: Chris Kindt (Digitas)
Vice President/Director of Media: Wade Rifkin (Digitas)
Managing Director: Robert Rakowitz (Mindshare)
Associate Media Director: Seth Spievogel (Mindshare)
Media Manager: Leela Ramdeen (Mindshare)
Senior Vice President: Matt Hantz (M Booth & Associates)
Principal: Shaunn D'Alessandro (AIFOS)
Chief Creative Officer: Rob Reilly/Jeff Benjamin/Lincoln Bjorkman (CPB / Digitas)
Vice President/Executive Creative Director: Mark Taylor (CPB)
Vice President/Creative Director: Allen Richardson (Cpb)
Interactive Creative Director: Dan Ligon (CPB)
Art Director: Daniel Burke/Rochelle Raiss/Mike Blanch/Josh Gross/Laura Potsic (CPB)
Copywriter: Kelly McCormick/Adrian Alexander/Jens McNaughton (CPB)
Director/Cognitive Anthropology: Kaylin Goldstein/Andrew Teagle (CPB)
Executive Vice President/Creative: Matt D'Ercole (Digitas)
Senior Vice President/Creative: Atit Shah (Digitas)
Creative Director: Tom Miller (CPB)
Describe the brief from the client
In 2010, American Express created Small Business Saturday, a new shopping day right after Black Friday, to help small businesses get what they needed most: more customers. The challenge in 2011 was to cement its place as an official shopping day in the US, and drive solid business outcomes to America’s independent, brick-and-mortar retailers.
American Express built a marketing campaign that communicated the importance of small businesses, while driving home a call to action for consumers and small businesses at the local level. Consumers were asked to shop, and small businesses were provided with the tools they needed to get the word out to their customers.
Creative Execution
American Express has been offering small business credit cards and services for over 20 years. And we’re single-mindedly committed to helping small businesses succeed. It’s the American Express OPEN mission: helping businesses do more business. But to truly help small businesses be successful, we needed to address their most pressing challenge: getting customers.
American Express created Small Business Saturday with the objective of driving traffic and sales to small businesses across America. Building upon the tremendous success of 2010, American Express set out in 2011 to make Small Business Saturday a permanent fixture of the holiday season.
Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.
To help it become an annual event, American Express challenged consumers to step up and publicly pledge to shop small. TV, print ads, and banners asked them to pledge on Facebook, where they could also find and map out local small businesses in their area. Corporate partners also pitched in, with FedEx giving away $25 American Express Shop Small gift cards to encourage people to shop.
American Express sought to:
1.Create a community, garnering more Facebook 'likes' than in 2010.
2.Drive demand for goods and services at small, independently owned businesses. If 2010 was about awareness, 2011 was about sales.
Describe the results in as much detail as possible.
Small Business Saturday struck a chord with consumers, small business owners and employees, corporate America, and policy makers in a way that few could have ever predicted. Over 40,000 people redeemed the $25 Shop Small gift cards, and 2.7m people 'liked' the Facebook page—more than double the previous year.
In the end, 103m Americans shopped small including President Obama, who took his daughters on a shopping trip to a bookstore in Washington, DC. The US Senate even declared Small Business Saturday an official day. In just its second year, it had become a permanent fixture on the holiday shopping calendar.