Twitter
Andrew Davidson 
Susan Menke 
Susan Wolfe 
Lisa Hronek Posts Tagged ‘Print’
American Express increases credit card direct marketing in Canada
Seeing potential in Canadian market, American Express’s marketing campaigns evolve and integrate
In October, American Express launched a multi-million dollar “Realize the Potential” campaign in Canada. This move is significant as it represents the first major brand advertising from American Express in Canada in almost a year. Developed by OgilvyOne Worldwide, the advertising campaign promised an integrated effort across multiple marketing channels.
Initial print advertisements were captured by Mintel Comperemedia in October. Running through February of this year, the ads take a playful tone to appeal to a younger demographic than is traditionally associated with American Express. Print ads in The Globe and Mail use color on a black background for impact and cleverly spell out the name “Daniel” in numbers. The ad states that “we see you as a person, not a number.” A link is provided for more information about the campaign: www.americanexpress.ca/potential.
Now in 2010, we’re seeing new print advertising. An ad in the National Post simply states “Be a traveler, not a tourist,” as American Express demonstrates that it is more than just a payments card. To create additional impact, ads have also been published in non-traditional shapes and sizes. One seen in February in the Toronto Star is L-shaped and playfully states “Come fly with me…or me! or me!” to demonstrate the flexibility of the Membership Rewards Program given that you can use rewards to fly on any airline.
The print advertisements and digital campaign are now being integrated with direct mail. In February, direct mail offers for the American Express Platinum Card included the “Realize the Potential” tagline, while statement mailings took the same blithe tone as the print advertisements to describe how easy it is to turn points into rewards.
Just last week American Express announced a new Canadian campaign to promote card acceptance at popular merchants such as fast food outlets and drug stores. Combined with an increase in mail volume, these efforts show that American Express is clearly committed to investment in the Canadian credit card market.
Vanguard marketing campaign creates verb with “Vanguarding”
Vanguard launched a new advertising campaign last week encouraging investors to “stop just investing and start Vanguarding.” The company began the marketing campaign by running ads on the front page of each section of The New York Times Monday, March 15 and a full page ad in section A, page five.
A key component of the launch was tying the message of the ad with the content of the media. An ad on the front page of the paper stated, “Reading only the front page is just investing. Getting the whole story is Vanguarding.” The ad on the front page of the arts section read, “Going with the latest fad is just investing. Choosing a timeless style is Vanguarding.”
Vanguard’s marketing campaign takes a cue from companies like Bing and Google, who have sought to create verbs out of their names. The campaign seeks to return to the basics of investing and in doing so uses an old-fashioned approach—turning a company name into a verb.
Why this approach? Vanguard stated that with competitors’ increased advertising, it couldn’t take a “me too” approach. Vanguard wants to establish its way of investing as the best way—following sound principles, investing at-cost and partnering with a client-owned firm.
A digital component is also part of the campaign, with advertising placements on websites such as CNN Money and Yahoo Finance. Half of Vanguard’s advertising budget will be allocated to the digital space, compared to 30-40% in the past.
This new campaign is a great approach for the company and will definitely help differentiate it from competitors. However, since this campaign is different from Vanguard’s past approach, it will have to prove very successful in order to continue.
2010 Financial Services Trends – get the slides here
We had a successful webinar yesterday; thanks to all who attended! Sorry about the sound difficulties at the beginning of the webinar.
Those of you who tuned in submitted tons of great questions about our financial services trend forecasts for this coming year. I’m crafting answers today and this weekend, so I hope to have them up on the blog by Monday. Please of course, feel free to use the comments field here if you’d like to submit more questions about our predictions.
In the meantime, Mintel Comperemedia’s fabulous marketing team has created a link to the webinar recording. You can either listen to it again (or for the first time if you missed it yesterday!) or you can download the slides to peruse at your own leisure. Click here to do so.