Company: American Express OPEN, New York, NY
Entry Submitted By: Digitas
Company Description: Digitas, a digitally-led, global integrated brand agency, builds brands for some of the foremost companies in the world by creating ideas with impact.
Nomination Category: Marketing Campaign Awards Categories - Specialty
Nomination Sub Category: Brand Experience of the Year

Nomination Title: Big Break for Small Business

Tell the story of this nominated brand experience program for the judges (up to 525 words). Describe the genesis, planning, execution, and results to date of your campaign. If applicable, remember to describe what's unique or innovative about your program:

Social media has become a part of everyday life for millions of people, making it critical for small business success. The challenge for many small businesses is how to leverage social media to its fullest potential. In 2011, we launched Big Break for Small Business®, a national competition to select 5 winning businesses, and empower them to tap in to the power of social media. Our first-year winners not only put social media to work for their businesses, they also paid it forward — sharing their new-found knowledge with their local business community.

When we launched the program again in 2012, the objective was to increase the scale of this social media educational program: help small businesses to be more successful, while also helping their local communities. We sought out businesses that were active locally, and developed a program to encourage them, their fellow small businesses and local consumers to get more involved: a Big Break for the winner was a Big Break for the entire community. So how did we rally small businesses and their communities? We partnered with and utilized Facebook. Big Break launched on the Facebook platform as an education program that offered businesses access to best in class social media resources.

Over 12,500 small business owners nationwide entered and our expert judges then narrowed the field to 10 finalists. We armed each finalist with a marketing toolkit—including sharable videos telling the story of each small business; branded marketing assets like logos, emails and banners; in-store signage to rally the communities on Facebook to vote; and a guide with creative ideas on how to leverage these tools for maximum exposure. The videos in particular were seen as an added value marketing tool for each business owner. They could be used beyond the contest to promote their business and increase awareness to then further help their local communities. The finalists used these customized toolkits to spread the word throughout their community, seeding the program in their social networks, driving votes from their business websites, advertising the Big Break opportunity in their stores, and sharing the assets with local media for broadcast coverage.

Through “Likes” and shares, consumers campaigned for their favorite finalists. After more than 57,000 votes (45% of which were generated through organic traffic) and 37,772 video views later, we had our 5 winners. We visited the winners for social media strategy sessions and hosted Town Meetings to give the winning communities access to the same expertise. We gave each winner $25K to invest in their success and Cardmembers received a $20 statement credit when they shopped at local small businesses. At the end of the program, over 25% of the 57,000+ votes were driven by the finalists’ marketing toolkits, and the program experienced a 78% increase in PR impressions from the year before.

Big Break helped small businesses beyond the 5 winners do more business because of brand awareness through social media. It transformed the way they promote themselves, their brand, and connect with consumers. All of which ultimately helped increase sales. The competition made American Express OPEN an integral part of small business success.

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Provide a brief biography of the leader of the team that planned and executed this marketing campaign (up to 125 words):

American Express OPEN was designed to address small business owner needs, a goal expressed in its mission statement: to help businesses do more business. Since its launch 25 years ago, OPEN has established itself as the leading small business credit card issuer in the US.

Since the early 2000s, and throughout the recovery from the 2008 economic downturn, the small business financial products category has become increasingly crowded. With the advent of digital tools and alternative payment platforms focused on helping businesses manage their money, many financial services institutions have shifted focus to new product development: Chase’s Ink and Capital One’s Spark. In this competitive environment, American Express saw an opportunity to differentiate itself from other credit card issuers simply by putting small businesses first.