American Express
The American Express Business Explorer Credit Card was made for small business owners looking to take their enterprises to the next level. But unfortunately, this was a struggling product. According to studies at the time, many business owners generally don’t actually associate Amex with Business – they see an Amex Card as a consumer product to earn points and reap the rewards.
The other issue is that it’s previous positioning has been all about travel benefits. However, small business owners generally don’t invest in a financial aid to take holidays – they do it to help them manage their cash flow and gain access to credit that allows them to make big purchases for their company.
To top it all off, we found that small business owners very rarely seek financial advice from large corporations, instead opting to listen to other Small Business owners, who seem to just ‘get’ what it’s like to run your own company and better understand the very personal investment the grassroots have.
On top of this, small business owners have a general distrust of large corporations. And with financial institutions all talking to small business owners in the same way, we had to do things differently.
Our work for the Business Explorer Credit Card was built on authenticity. So we worked with real business owners to craft a digitally-led campaign, tapping into authentic displays of action, focus, and passion for craft in a way that only small business owners can.
Role: Art Director / Designer
We worked with photographer Stuart Miller to craft our imagery, which needed to express action, dynamism, and dedication.
A shallow depth of field ensured each hero talent was always the primary focus, with background elements just clear enough to ensure a sense of place at a glance.
To increase engagement, we opted to have elements coming towards the camera to lead the eye back up to the hero talent’s face, allowing the audience to sense the business owners’ passion for their craft.
Our businesses needed to touch on four key pillars of industry: retail, construction, healthcare and professional services.
But to differentiate our product in market, as well as avoid confusion with our consumer campaigns, the businesses we showcased couldn’t be stereotypical, nor could they be too consumer-facing.
We focused on hands-on, craft-based business owners, including a surfboard shaper, a solar panel installer, a gym owner, and an architect.
On top of this, we felt it was important to feature a diverse range of ethnicities and genders, to better represent the modern Australian business owner.
Given our unconventional approach to imagery for this market, our campaign line had to reaffirm that this product was all about business. Similarly, we had to speak to our audience in their tone: straight-talking, to the point, and here to get work done.
Our campaign then became ‘Small business. Big goals.’
The line was to evoke the sense that, with our product, your small business won’t stay small for long. At the same time, these business owners all have a very personal investment in their enterprises, so we wanted to show that we understood their ambition, their focus, and their passion for their craft in a way that most financial institutions don’t.
The line was featured on all of our executions, including out-of-home.
Short videos were distributed across social media and digital placements in both horizontal and vertical formats…
And then reinforced our introductory offer with retargeting videos, reaching audiences based on which creative they had been exposed to prior.
Our creative sat across all kinds of digital placements, from small-scale display banners…
…to full page takeovers such as skins and scrollers…
As well as content-rich VDX Exponential micro-sites to showcase our product benefits.
In a first for the brand, we even built depth maps to created 3D photos to drive organic engagement across the American Express Facebook page.