Disciplines

Analytics
Brand Strategy
Corporate Design
Copywriting

Our work with American Express comprises 27 individual brand and marketing communications projects over almost ten years. These are just three of them.

Becoming the world’s most respected service brand

American Express is a diversified financial services corporation with the most valuable brand in its sector. Their ambition “to become the world’s most respected service brand” finds expression through three strategies; to expand internationally; to broaden the card network; and to increase the depth of financial services.

To speed the international and network expansion, American Express decided to develop joint-ventures with banks in a number of emerging markets which is where Manifest helped.

Protecting the brand in new markets

We were appointed by American Express to develop brand implementation guidelines for use by their joint-venture partners and agencies. Research showed the need for simplicity and clarity to ensure that non-brand professionals could apply the core brand elements easily and consistently to create powerful marketing communications in their own markets. We developed a set of clear, pictorially guided steps with simple tools in a brief printed document with CD-ROM delivered templates and assets. Our analysis of the local language requirements involved Manifest researching local tone of voice sensitivities and introducing the first ever Russian and Arabic tag lines to the Blue Box.

Increasing brand value

Today American Express is one of the top 15 most valuable brands in the world. The brand is valued at around $25 billion. Its brand name has become a sought-after symbol of one of its key target markets, the global affluent, providing immense commercial edge in a fiercely competitive market. American Express was recently ranked highest in customer satisfaction among 18 other card issuers for the second consecutive year*.

* 2008 Credit Card Satisfaction Study, J D Power and Associates.

Taking the European purchasing world by surprise

Reducing processing costs

Research showed that in large organisations the cost of processing a single purchase order could be as much as £48 whether it was for a packet of pencils or a laptop. American Express used its payment card processing expertise to develop the Corporate Purchasing Card as a purchasing solution to lower processing costs by up to 75%. After a successful launch in the USA, a European roll-out was planned.

First to market

American Express asked Manifest to advise them on the product positioning and launch of the Corporate Purchasing Card in Europe. Commissioned research indicated that the compliance and broader needs of purchasing managers and financial controllers in the UK, France and Germany were substantially different from the USA. Using this data we developed a European product positioning for the Corporate Purchasing Card and developep key messaging for the product literature, sales support materials and advertising campaign in the FT and other relevant publications.

Early gains in market share

While its competitors were soon to launch rival products, being first to market in Europe with a proposition tailored to defined needs of purchasing managers and financial controllers gave Amercian Express a strong start and the opportunity to enroll major corporations including BAE Systems, ICI and Willis, as well as many national government departments. The Corporate Services Group which markets the Corporate Purchasing Card, now has relationships with 75% of the Fortune 500 and 90% of the Fortune 100.

Sub-brands and marketing communications for Power Suite

Managing travel and related expenditure is a big priority for large corporates. Competitors of American Express, including airlines, could not compete with the quality of data provision but were seeking to take market share by providing customers with sophisticated data analysis tools. American Express responded by develop the Power Suite of analysis software and asked Manifest to develop a sub-brand and a range of marketing communications to create awareness and uptake.

As well as developing a product positioning and sub-brand for each product in the Suite, we worked with American Express's software developers to improve the user interface of the software before developing functionality walk-throughs delivered on CD-ROM. We produced a booklet on each product to support the CDs and to provide detailed specifications.