The Situation

The express company that forwarded freight and valuables evolved into a company that created and sold financial products like money orders and travelers cheques. Following an era of international expansion, the company became an entity perhaps best known for its charge card. Today, American Express is a global payments company.

In Singapore the American Express company are constantly looking at new opportunities to give their new and existing customers great value added services, one of these arose through a need to overcome a particular challenge common through out asia.

The Challenge

With the amazing growth of eCommerce through out the world, so to has an increase in fraudulant activities in the use of credit cards. This has created a great deal of mis-trust and problems when a merchant becomes victim of fraud and in turn credit card companies have found it difficult to compensate a merchant when dealing with cases outside of the United States as one example.

As a precaution, many (most) online retailers have made it a policy not to accept credit card transactions from certain overseas countries, most commonly Asian countries. This has led to a very large gap with many thousands of customers unable to purchase from their homes from web sites located in the United States.

To over come this challenge a company called comGateway was formed to fulfill the needs of shoppers in Asia looking to purchase online in the USA. The service is essentially a sophisticated logistics company and includes a 'Concierge' service to take customers all the way though the buying proceess.

The result is an ability to shop from Asia at over 300,000 web sites throughout the USA. They will supply a USA shipping address and then at a very competitive rate, ship your purchase back to Asia within 4-6 days.

The Solution

American Express Asia utilised the comGateway service to formulate a new offering and Ad.WRIGHT were commisioned to create the unique co-branded experience to carry the service following the American Express 'luxury lifestyle' emotive branding.

To promote the service an integrated marketing campaign was conceptualised to connect to their existing database, plus allow further marketing to partner banks.

After brainstorming ideas and getting the main concepts approved, these were applied throught out the user experience including:

• Creating the new 'Global eShop' identity
• Supporting brand messaging 'Simple. Easy. Secure'
• Supporting 'luxury lifestyle' photography
• Direct Mail (printed)
• eDM (traditional emailer)
• Landing pages
• Sign up pages
• Digital Ad Banners
• Copywriting throughout

The Result

The solution was delivered in time and on budget with Ad.WRIGHT's strength in interactive and branding allowing for a unified experience across all media.

Ad.WRIGHT were also able to coordinate all stakeholders, effectively project managing to completion. Direct mail templates and 'Ad banner' files were made available via secure FTP to the partner banks for local printing in their respective local countries participating in the campaign.

Tracking and success metrics were supplied by comGatway, ensuring accountability of every direct mail or eDM sent out.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------