The American Express Card was struggling to maintain its uniqueness in a flooded credit card category. Its competitors were also beginning to target a more affluent customer – Amex’s traditional target.
American Express needed to differentiate itself and establish new relevance with today’s consumers in sensitive economic times. Amex decided that what made it unique was the community of card members, which it decided to activate to make "the value of belonging" central to American Express’s core value proposition. Digitas identified a strong “sense of purpose and moral integrity” among American Express Card-members.
Members Project had launched in 2007 to allow Amex cardholders to channel donations to specific charitably causes. MP ’08 saw those who participated the previous year contacted at a grassroots level and then activated via social media. They were invited to submit their project ideas and use a wide range of promotional tools, including Facebook pages, project widgets, HTML emails, IM techniques and video to rally support for their favourite projects.
Having submitted their cause ideas they were hosted on a powerful Web 2.0 platform and voting was encouraged by the project owners themselves, promoting their entries and buoyed by paid media tied to milestone voting dates. The winning causes received up to $2.5m from American Express.