Sync or Swim: Amex's Experimental Marketing Strategy
March 9, 2013 12:47 PM
Wolfe, Daniel
Wolfe, Daniel
Syncing Up
Wolfe, Daniel
#Hashtag
Amex Sync has an ongoing promotion called Product #Hashtag, which allows customer to buy products such as the Xbox 360 game console by sending a message over Twitter . Many smaller companies have tried enabling payments through Twitter, but with mixed results.
Friends with Benefits
An earlier Amex promotion over Facebook, called "Link, Like, Love," tracked customers' interest on Facebook to offer customized deals. "Our vision is to bring our business to where our customers are, and theyre on Facebook, an Amex exec said of the 2011 program.
Jonathan Alcorn/Bloomberg
Halo 4
Amex tied a promotion into the massively popular Halo series for Xbox gamers, offering enough money in statement credits to cover more than half of the latest game's $60 price tag. The Halo series sold 46 million copies prior to the November release of Halo 4, giving Amex a large fan base to pitch its cards to. (Image: Bloomberg News)
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Farmville
Amex isn't just for hardcore gamers. The immensely popular casual game, Farmville, also saw a major dose of Amex marketing. Amex rewarded Farmville players for opening a Serve digital wallet account and planting a Serve tree within the game over 2 million virtual trees were planted by late last year. (Image: Bloomberg News)
Foursquare
Visa and MasterCard cards are now part of a program within Foursquare to offer discounts to the social network's 30 million users but Amex got there first. Amex and Foursquare have had a marketing agreement in place since 2011.
Bluebird
With its Bluebird card, Amex is putting its brand in front of consumers in a way that is still quite alien to most conventional card issuers it is selling them from a kiosk in Walmart stores.
