Building relationships is our passion. So working hand-in-hand with American Express to build stronger connections with their customers came naturally to us. We've created impactful consumer marketing programs that have gotten people to talk, to play, to learn. And sometimes the results surprised even us.

Word of Mouth 101

The relationship started in 2004 with a program that we developed to introduce ourselves to the organization. "Word of Mouth 101" was a fun, school-themed initiative complete with pencil-box invites, backpacks and a shiny yellow school bus to pick up 20+ American Express employees who were eager to attend our class. This successful event established us as experts in viral and relationship marketing and our name quickly spread around the organization.

We began working with the OPEN Online Acquisitions team to develop strategies that would enable them to acquire qualified leads and generate positive word of mouth for their products.

We conceived and executed online acquisition sweepstakes campaigns, spearheaded marketing initiatives including emails, banners and landing pages and utilized research and analytics to conduct multivariate email and landing page testing. We quickly became one of American Express' go-to agency's for online creative that builds relationships and gets results.

After a stream of successes with the Online Acquisitions group, the Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express came to us to help them build their relationship with existing Starwood loyalists.

We responded with a simple, yet engaging, online match game that allowed players to earn Starpoints, which they could use towards free nights, while they learned about the Card as they played.

In just one week, 42K unique visitors were exposed to the addictive game, thus driving awareness and acquisition of the Card in a very non-traditional and unexpected way.

After word spread about the Starwood game, the TrueEarnings® Card from Costco and American Express wanted their own engagement and loyalty program targeting existing Cardmembers.

Propelled by promotional emails and newsletters, we drove Cardmembers to a microsite where they could share their True Earnings stories and hear from others just like them.

The number of stories submitted exceeded expectations by 400% and were so robust that we were able to utilize them across various channels, thus continuing to build customer relationships both online and off.

Now more than ever, we will continue to utilize our innovation, creativity and smarts to help American Express connect with their customers in new and different ways. After all, the relationship is everything.