Before the MP ’08 project submission period began, MP ’07 participants and major charitable organizations were alerted via opt-in and publicly available channels in a “grassroots” effort to prime the core audience. With the official launch of MP ’08 two months later, high-impact paid placements drove Cardmembers and guest participants to submit their project ideas and utilize a vast array of customized promotional tools (project widgets for Social Media, HTML emails, Instant Messaging techniques, video) to rally support for their favourite projects.The communications around Members Project helped inspire and galvanize specific audiences at key moments along the program’s timeline. When submissions were closed and the voting phase began, visitation to the Members Project was driven by project owners promoting their entries and buoyed by Paid Media tied to milestone voting dates.

The social and promotional elements of the communications strategy increased organic visitation to MembersProject.com over 500% from previous year. Expanding participation beyond the previous ‘Cardmember only’ stipulation in ’07 to non-Cardmembers proved extremely successful and set new standards for engagement with over half of all visitors performing high-value actions (views, nominations, votes, clicks-to-apply) on MembersProject.com.

Syndicated “buzz” research showed Members Project outpaced all other American Express media activity for digital PR for 2008. Participants were more than 5x as likely to socially promote the program compared to previous American Express efforts that did not contain an appeal to the collective power of Membership.