Small Business Digital Media - Learning From Amex and Twitter

Brand Partnership

With 2013 off to a start, big brands are leading the way in digital and social media development. It has been suggested that brand partnership with be a key trend this year for big and small businesses alike. Last month, Britt Michaelian, writing for the Huffington post outlined the importance of this technique for small businesses going forward into 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/britt-michaelian/social-media-small-business_b_2491821.html

Creativity is an essential part of maximising on brand awareness and online presence through collaborative digital and social media campaigns. Do not be afraid to think outside of the box and marry up two seemingly incompatible ideas, concepts and tools. Relevance and the ultimate message are still a consideration; you wouldn’t necessarily want to allow the advertising of a dental health care range on your confectionary website. However it is all about functionality and consumer accessibility.

A perfect example of this is the new partnership between American Express and Twitter. The brand partnership of two power houses is working on a “pay by tweet” purchasing system through the medium of micro blogging.

 “According to the Wall Street Journal, the new service with Amex would let people who link their cards to their Twitter accounts buy products simply by tweeting in response to special offers made over the service.” Charles Arthur, the Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/12/twitter-american-express-pay-by-tweet

“American Express card holders who connect their card numbers to their Twitter accounts can post on Twitter to trigger a purchase of select products, including discounted American Express gift cards, Kindle Fire tablets from Amazon.com Inc. and jewellery from designer Donna Karan. The program will roll out over the next few days.” http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/02/11/twitter-amex-to-collaborate-on-e-commerce-sales-on-twitter/

Twitter already receives impressive revenue figures for promoting brands and this in another string to their bow, not just for tangible goods but virtual as well. This will open up a whole new promotion and payments system with brands working in tandem. The next brands forecast to make these changes are Xbox Live, Facebook and FourSquare.

Small businesses will be focusing heavily on brand awareness in addition to boosting sales and requests for services this year and brand partnership holds some lessons for them too. Getting a head in digital media and opening up collaborative opportunities will require well researched, engaging content; in addition to creativity and not being afraid to ask.

For more inspiration see:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/brand-partnerships.