Membership Made Social
Unlocking the power of Amex membership
When you carry an American Express, you’re a card member, not a customer — that implies sociability. But, for all its focus on membership, Amex had never really explored what that means for a social-first world. Social was used like any other media channel: a place to post ads and share corporate updates. It wasn’t particularly participatory or conversational, nor did it reflect the medium and the many ways people use it.
As creative lead for their new digital and social media agency of record, I oversaw dozens of social-first projects — and hundreds of social posts — for American Express with one overarching goal: to transform their social channels into a space that involved card members, fostered their sense of belonging, and provided them with the inspiration and insight they needed to get the most out of life with their Amex (and induce envy in those who didn’t yet have one).
As with any major endeavor (especially one for a massive matrix organization like American Express), that mission continues, but the initial efforts that follow paid immediate dividends.
Agency Barbarian, New York
Client American Express
Role Creative Direction, Social Strategy, Art Direction, Design
Amex Membership Week
Travel wear that went from ‘gram to gone in just two weeks
From five-star stays to first-class flights, American Express card members are used to being rewarded when they travel. With borders reopening, and travel restrictions starting to ease, we saw the perfect opportunity to reignite card members’ wanderlust and welcome them back to the skies as part of Amex’s first-ever Membership Week, a celebration of its community across its social channels.
We set about creating an exclusive, high-end travel wear collection that was comfy enough for the layover, but smart enough for the lounge in partnership with Quincy Moore, the co-founder and creative director of small business New York or Nowhere. And, we did it all in just two weeks.
Inspired by the Golden Age of Travel, Quincy combined classic Amex iconography with a little New York history to create the IDLEWILD capsule collection, a reference to the original name for John F. Kennedy International Airport.
We turned over the keys to Amex's Instagram account to Quincy, where he announced an exclusive opportunity for followers, inviting users into the decision-making and design process in the spirit of collaboration. Every piece of the collection featured an element of co-creation, and thousands weighed in on social media.
With a deadline of only two weeks, Quincy and his team of local craftspeople worked to turn the thousands of replies into a complete collection. Along the way, we created a series of stories where Quincy showed how card members helped shape the collection through their input and engagement.
With the IDLEWILD collection complete, we took to the streets of SoHo to debut the final results live on Instagram. Card members had just 48 hours to purchase — and they didn’t need to be told twice, selling out the entire collection in a fraction of the time.
Shop Small with Amex
The Internet loves a holiday
American Express cares deeply about thriving communities and the small businesses at the heart of every thriving neighborhood. That’s why, in the midst of the 2010 recession, they created Small Business Saturday and the Shop Small movement — as a way to encourage people to support local businesses and realize the impact it has on their community. With the COVID-19 pandemic raging and small businesses hurting, shopping small was more important than ever.
But, when you ask a person on the street (or an Amex card member) to envision a small business, what kind of establishment usually comes to mind? A neighborhood boutique or a local artisan’s online store, but not a restaurant. So, when American Express came to us to create a social-first campaign that promoted small business restaurants everywhere and drove reservations as part of their Every Resy Counts initiative, we turned to something everyone on social could relate to: holidays.
From Talk Like a Pirate Day and Pi Day to May the 4th, the strangest anniversaries fill our social feeds with celebration. But, when it comes to food, only tacos seem to have their day. Where’s Fettuccine Friday or Szechuan Saturday or Samosa Sunday? There’s a whole world of cuisines out there worth celebrating, and our campaign would do just that — putting countless culinary creations on the calendar, and providing every small business restaurant, and what it serves, a day to shine.
A whole month of culinary social holidays gave diners new ways and new reasons to grab a table at a nearby small business, and served as the ideal foundation for a variety of paid and organic social activity — from daily highlights of various cuisines and the local restaurants users could book a Resy at to enjoy them, to quizzes, games, and polls that tested card members’ knowledge of their favorite dishes.
The result? A record 24.8 million diners enjoyed a meal during the month, making over 8.6 million reservations to more than 8,000 restaurants through Amex-owned Resy — not only surpassing American Express’ expectations for the campaign, but breaking Resy’s record for most reservations made in a single day, as well.
Amex Social Extensions
Membership made meta
As a large organization, American Express has a lot of initiatives — and a lot of agency partners. While our mission was to reexamine how Amex approached social media and define the brand actions that spun out of that effort, we were also asked to adapt the efforts of our sister agencies for social from time to time.
By leaning into what makes social media so great — its metatextuality — we used these adaptations as an opportunity to remix, reinterpret, and comment on what the viewer might have seen in other mediums like TV or print in a native way, reinforcing Amex as a scroll-stopping, authentically social brand.
