With the launch of a new creative platform, “Don’t Live Life Without It”, American Express wanted to drive brand consideration. Targeting people moving forward in life and business, Amex sought to break through the clutter in one of media’s most saturated environments, NYC. The challenge was: how do we reach this target, who is always on the move, and deliver contextually relevant messages at scale?

Tapping into NY culture and pride, Amex deployed a geo-targeted approach leveraging digital taxi-tops to deliver contextually relevant messages. The messages conveyed Amex’s fresh take on its iconic tagline to convey how Amex backs people in life and business, during both bucket-list moments and once-in-a-lifetime locations and everyday habits and neighborhood spots.

We designed a custom algorithm to interpret thousands of input variables, rank the data and ultimately to serve the most precise and localized message out of a group of hundreds of different messaging options.

We created 4 tiers of messaging. In the first tier, American Express partnered with dozens of merchants ranging in size from the iconic Macy’s on 34th street to the locally renowned Chelsea Piers. If the taxi was within the designated range of one of these partners, the algorithm prioritized their messaging above all others. If the taxi was not in range of one of the direct partners, a second tier of messaging was created for small businesses like coffee shops, pharmacies, dry cleaners and hardware stores who accept American Express cards. These types of businesses were strategically chosen to change the false perception that American Express isn’t accepted at these small businesses. A third tier of messaging was created for New York City landmarks like Times Square and Rockefeller Center as well as famous streets like Park Ave and Broadway. And finally, a fourth tier of messaging included broader neighborhoods like the West Village, Lower East Side, Midtown and more.

To localize the messaging on the digital taxi tops, we created more than 450 geo-targeted locations around New York City. The area for each geo-targeted location was uniquely defined and coded individually using their longitude and latitude coordinates. Larger geo-targeted locations covered neighborhoods including New York’s famous West Village, Lower East Side, and Midtown. Smaller, more specific geo-targeted locations were defined within broader neighborhoods, allowing us to tailor our messaging further to highlight individual streets or local American Express card-accepting merchants.

In total, 125 taxis succeeded in delivering 26 million impressions over 13 weeks, provided hundreds of thousands of earned impressions for partnering merchants and was the single widest use of geographical targeting in American Express’ history.