American Express Open – prepared to participate
Posted by Steffen Stäuber
Just watched Marcy Shinder´s CMS Summit presentation about American Express OPEN and I´m really impressed by this project.
AMEX OPEN is a specialized team that is dedicated to serve the needs of small business owners to support them with knowledge and new insights to succeed in their businesses.
“Their growth is our growth.” says Marcy Shinder, Vice President of Brand Strategy and Marketing, and that`s why AMEX is putting a lot of efforts and marketing dollars (that probably would be spent otherwise on classical media) into this venture.
They´re hosting business conferences, like the Inc 500 or “Speed Networking Sessions” to provide small business owners a platform to exchange their ideas and business cards.
They even created a new product, the American Express Plum Card . This card is especially designed for small businesses and offers a lot new features.
Together with Federated Media and the mindset of gathering a conversation in a sponsored area, they launched OPEN FORUM, a content network that aggregates interesting business knowledge.
“Our goal was to bring together leading experts in an engaging experience at the OPEN platform itself. Thus, any of the authors work that was picked up on other blogs, social media engines like Digg, StumbleUpon, etc., would all give credit back to OPEN as being the keeper/facilitator of the conversation. In the new world of media, these trackbacks and links provide a new form of Brand Equity for OPEN. This again drives home the point behind the OPEN brand that they are here for Small Businesses to make their life better and grow their business.”
Furthermore AMEX OPEN is part of “Make Mine a Million $ Business”. A project for Women’s Economic Independence. They offer a combination of money, mentoring, marketing and technology tools that women entrepreneurs need to help grow their businesses.
AMEX is doing a really good job here. They are inviting influencer’s to participate and scale the conversations online. That´s the way you pull in new customers, build up relationships and turn them into Brand Evangelists.
Be relevant, listen to them and serve their needs – it´s that simple.
Tags: American Express Open, AMEX, content network, makemineamillion.org, open, social media